Hunting Security Bugs

by Lawrence Landauer, Bryan Jeffries, Tom Gallagher

Learn how to think like an attacker--and identify potential security issues in your software. In this essential guide, security testing experts offer practical, hands-on guidance and code samples to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 073562187X
• ISBN13: 9780735621879
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Microsoft Press
• Length: 559 Pages
• Weight: 2.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 7.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Excellent, whether you skim or dive into it.

This is a very impressive book on finding security issues in software, especially because it really can serve as a book for almost all audiences. If you are not an expert, you can still gain a good understanding of what sorts of issues you need to be considering when writing secure software. At this level, it is valuable to know what a buffer overflow, format string attack or SQL injection are, for example, and how to prevent them. If you are interested in diving further into the details, this book will take you as far down as you are prepared for, including an exploration of buffer overflows at the machine register level. This is a great book to read through once, and then keep as a reference for when you need to review something you've covered, in greater detail.

A very practical book that will probably make you change the way you to you program

Beside Bruce Schneier books, this is the second software security book that I am reading. The first being Building Secure Software: How to Avoid Security Problems the Right Way and I have prefered this one because it provides more concrete examples. The book consists of over 20 chapters covering different security areas. As a software developer, some chapters appeared less relevent and less interesting to me and I guess that it is because these chapters are geared principally toward testers. However, at least 2 chapters should be extremely interesting and valuable to developers like myself. It is the chapters that demonstrate with step by step tutorials how a hacker would do to exploit buffer overflow and format string problems. I was already familiar with buffer overflows and I had read a similar chapter about them in Building Secure Software: How to Avoid Security Problems the Right Way but the format string exploits were new to me. As expected since the book is published by Microsoft Press, the book has a strong bias torward Microsoft products (ie.: .NET and ActiveX controls security) but the presented topics are general enough to make this book very valuable even for users of other OSes and/or development tools.

Finally something more than a checklist

As with other reviewers of the book: in an attempt at full disclosure, I also work at Microsoft. I am a Test Lead in the Office organization. One of the challenges that faces any quality assurance engineer or Test engineer, or whatever our industry has chosen to call us this year is that we are constantly tasked with trying to "test in security" or "find the flaws in the product" after it has already been coded. While this is clearly a PART of our jobs, it is by no means the most important part. This book addresses what I consider to be a much higher priority for the Test Org generally, and Test Engineers specifically: helping reduce security vulnerabilities before they are coded into the product to begin with: as features are being spec'd and as code is being designed. This book is not a simple check-list testers can use to say "Yes, my feature is secure, Ship It". Rather, it helps place Test into the frame of mind of a hacker, it gives test a set of tools to help find security issues, it outlines an approach to software Test that will cause fewer security issues to be coded at all, let alone have to be fixed post code-complete (or in a Service Pack). Used in conjunction with other test books like _How to Break Software Security_ by James A. Whittaker, this book will help ship more secure products. Incidentally, I expect hackers will be reading this book in an effort to better understand the science of hunting security bugs, as well as the tools we use to do so - so if you're not using it, I'd expect your attackers will be thankful...

Excellent book to start / or add to your book collection!

If you are looking for a great book to start / or to enhance your library on security this is the book. I was looking for a book that brought depth to the subject but didn't assume that I was an expert already. When I browsed this one in the bookstore, I was impressed that it started off with how you should think about testing your application and what the difference is when it comes to security testing. Funny thing now is that when ever I encounter a situation I think about how vulnerable. Believe me, thats pretty scary. The authors proceeded to give a logical path for working toward looking at all the areas where an application might be open to an attack. The authors uses thread models to help flush out the design of an application and explains why they are valuable and how to use them. They then get into looking at entry points and point out areas where you might not realize that you have one. They continue with a discussion on how a malicious client and server could be use to comprise your security. Next they cover ways that someone could fool the user into giving up information such as with spoofing and information disclosure, They then get into discussions about techniques such as buffer overflows, stack and heap manipulation, format string attack and script attacks including XML issues. Along with this you'll find information on permissions, areas for denial of services as well as ActiveX attacks. Finally, you find a very good checklist for doing a systematic approach to checking your security. The topics are well written and provide plenty of examples as well as thoughts about how to deal with the topic. Even if you don't read every chapter there is plenty of information for any particular area that you are interested in. It makes a great book to have on your shelve when you need to brush up or learn about a particular topic. After reading the book, I contacted one of the authors and asked him to present to my team. Yes, I work at the same company but that didn't influence my decision to buy the book especially since it was my own money going to purchase the book. He consented to giving us a presentation and his talk has inspired my entire team to ask for a copy of his book. Being that I had already read about half of it, I knew what he was talking about so it reinforced my opinion of the book. I would say that is a pretty good indication of how good the book is when an entire team asked for a copy. You won't be sorry if you purchase this book.

Just what testers (and devs) need!

I first have to admit to some bias - I wrote the forward, and work down the hall from Tom and Lawrence. So you may want to just read it yourself and see! These guys really know their stuff. While few people have the fiendish mindset that the authors bring to finding security bugs, the techniques that they lay out in this book will help anyone get very close to the same results. I've been wanting a book that helps testers as much as Writing Secure Code has helped developers, and it's finally here.