Vulnerability anti-patterns:a timeless way to capture poor software practices (Vulnerabilities)

There is a distinct communication gap between the software engineering and cybersecurity communities when it comes to addressing reoccurring security problems, known as vulnerabilities. Many vulnerabilities are caused by software errors that are created by software developers. Insecure software development practices are common due to a variety of factors, which include inefficiencies within existing knowledge transfer mechanisms based on vulnerability databases (VDBs), software developers perceiving security as an afterthought, and lack of consideration of security as part of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). The resulting communication gap also prevents developers and security experts from successfully sharing essential security knowledge. The cybersecurity community makes their expert knowledge available in forms including vulnerability databases such as CAPEC and CWE, and pattern catalogues such as Security Patterns, Attack Patterns, and Software Fault Patterns. However, these sources are not effective at providing software developers with an understanding of how malicious hackers can exploit vulnerabilities in the software systems they create. As developers are familiar with pattern-based approaches, this paper proposes the use of Vulnerability Anti-Patterns (VAP) to transfer usable vulnerability knowledge to developers, bridging the communication gap between security experts and software developers. The primary contribution of this paper is twofold: (1) it proposes a new pattern template – Vulnerability Anti-Pattern – that uses anti-patterns rather than patterns to capture and communicate knowledge of existing vulnerabilities, and (2) it proposes a catalogue of Vulnerability Anti-Patterns (VAP) based on the most commonly occurring vulnerabilities that software developers can use to learn how malicious hackers can exploit errors in software

Investigating the tension between cloud-related actors and individual privacy rights

Historically, little more than lip service has been paid to the rights of individuals to act to preserve their own privacy. Personal information is frequently exploited for commercial gain, often without the person’s knowledge or permission. New legislation, such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation Act, has acknowledged the need for legislative protection. This Act places the onus on service providers to preserve the confidentiality of their users’ and customers’ personal information, on pain of punitive fines for lapses. It accords special privileges to users, such as the right to be forgotten. This regulation has global jurisdiction covering the rights of any EU resident, worldwide. Assuring this legislated privacy protection presents a serious challenge, which is exacerbated in the cloud environment. A considerable number of actors are stakeholders in cloud ecosystems. Each has their own agenda and these are not necessarily well aligned. Cloud service providers, especially those offering social media services, are interested in growing their businesses and maximising revenue. There is a strong incentive for them to capitalise on their users’ personal information and usage information. Privacy is often the first victim. Here, we examine the tensions between the various cloud actors and propose a framework that could be used to ensure that privacy is preserved and respected in cloud systems

Web Vulnerability Study of Online Pharmacy Sites

Consumers are increasingly using online pharmacies, but these sites may not provide an adequate level of security with the consumers’ personal data. There is a gap in this research addressing the problems of security vulnerabilities in this industry. The objective is to identify the level of web application security vulnerabilities in online pharmacies and the common types of flaws, thus expanding on prior studies. Technical, managerial and legal recommendations on how to mitigate security issues are presented. The proposed four-step method first consists of choosing an online testing tool. The next steps involve choosing a list of 60 online pharmacy sites to test, and then running the software analysis to compile a list of flaws. Finally, an in-depth analysis is performed on the types of web application vulnerabilities. The majority of sites had serious vulnerabilities, with the majority of flaws being cross-site scripting or old versions of software that have not been updated. A method is proposed for the securing of web pharmacy sites, using a multi-phased approach of technical and managerial techniques together with a thorough understanding of national legal requirements for securing systems

Multi-Layer Cyber-Physical Security and Resilience for Smart Grid

The smart grid is a large-scale complex system that integrates communication technologies with the physical layer operation of the energy systems. Security and resilience mechanisms by design are important to provide guarantee operations for the system. This chapter provides a layered perspective of the smart grid security and discusses game and decision theory as a tool to model the interactions among system components and the interaction between attackers and the system. We discuss game-theoretic applications and challenges in the design of cross-layer robust and resilient controller, secure network routing protocol at the data communication and networking layers, and the challenges of the information security at the management layer of the grid. The chapter will discuss the future directions of using game-theoretic tools in addressing multi-layer security issues in the smart grid.Comment: 16 page

Assessing and augmenting SCADA cyber security: a survey of techniques

SCADA systems monitor and control critical infrastructures of national importance such as power generation and distribution, water supply, transportation networks, and manufacturing facilities. The pervasiveness, miniaturisations and declining costs of internet connectivity have transformed these systems from strictly isolated to highly interconnected networks. The connectivity provides immense benefits such as reliability, scalability and remote connectivity, but at the same time exposes an otherwise isolated and secure system, to global cyber security threats. This inevitable transformation to highly connected systems thus necessitates effective security safeguards to be in place as any compromise or downtime of SCADA systems can have severe economic, safety and security ramifications. One way to ensure vital asset protection is to adopt a viewpoint similar to an attacker to determine weaknesses and loopholes in defences. Such mind sets help to identify and fix potential breaches before their exploitation. This paper surveys tools and techniques to uncover SCADA system vulnerabilities. A comprehensive review of the selected approaches is provided along with their applicability

Proposing a secure component-based-application logic and system’s integration testing approach

Software engineering moved from traditional methods of software enterprise applications to com-ponent based development for distributed system’s applications. This new era has grown up forlast few years, with component-based methods, for design and rapid development of systems, butfact is that , deployment of all secure software features of technology into practical e-commercedistributed systems are higher rated target for intruders. Although most of research has been con-ducted on web application services that use a large share of the present software, but on the otherside Component Based Software in the middle tier ,which rapidly develops application logic, alsoopen security breaching opportunities .This research paper focus on a burning issue for researchersand scientists ,a weakest link in component based distributed system, logical attacks, that cannotbe detected with any intrusion detection system within the middle tier e-commerce distributed ap-plications. We proposed An Approach of Secure Designing application logic for distributed system,while dealing with logically vulnerability issue