Secure and Resilient Software Development

Mark S. Merkow, Lakshmikanth Raghavan

• Publisher: Auerbach Publications
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781498759618
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Cyber Security
• Index: Computer Science

Although many software books highlight open problems in secure software development, few provide easily actionable, ground-level solutions. Breaking the mold, Secure and Resilient Software Development teaches you how to apply best practices and standards for consistent and secure software development. It details specific quality software developmen

Chapter 1

How Does Software Fail Thee? Let Us Count the Ways

Software is ubiquitous, even in places you wouldn’t imagine.

Software is so seamlessly interwoven into the fabric of modern living that it fades into the background without notice. We interact with software not only on home or office computers, but in our routine everyday activities—as we drive to the office in our cars, as we buy things at the supermarket, as we withdraw cash from an ATM, and even when we listen to music or make a phone call.

Chapter Overview

Chapter 1 surveys the landscape of software failures due to bad security, bad design, and bad development practices. We’ll look at the increasing volume of vulnerabilities, the breadth of their exposure, and the depth of the problems they cause. Finally, we’ll examine the true costs of problematic software and begin to explore solutions related to people, process, and technology to end the chaos once and for all.

Software is not used just by a small cross section of the modern-day society—the entire population depends on it. Airlines, banks, telecommunications companies, hospitals, supermarkets, gas stations, voting infrastructures, and countless other institutions rely on software.

Automated teller machines (ATMs) make our lives easier—24×7 access, depositing checks or cash, drive-up access, and even postage stamp purchasing. As you witness people in checkout lines starting writing checks for their groceries, you may grow frustrated or impatient because you know that payment cards (debit and credit) take only a few seconds to complete a purchase, and you wonder why anyone bothers with checks or paper anymore.

At this stage of technological innovation, we’ve come to realize that software must not only function properly but also be available to us at all times and in all places so that we can continue to thrive in the digital ways of life to which we’ve grown accustomed.

When software and the networked devices that it runs on fail, we often can’t figure out what to do and begin to panic. Think of a typical Sunday morning: You’re shopping at your local neighborhood supermarket and the checkout lines stop because of a widespread system crash. What do you do? Abandon your cart and start over somewhere else? Stick around to see whether the problem is resolved soon? Wait for further instructions?

Now think about the same thing happening in an online store such as Amazon.com. Between the losses of revenue, the bad press they’re certainly likely to receive, the loss of shoppers’ confidence, and the eventual hit their stock prices will take, companies and organizations simply can’t afford to take a risk with unreliable software, yet they stake their businesses on it daily.

While we’d like to believe that software is as reliable as it needs to be, reality proves us wrong every time. Throughout this book, we’ll examine what makes software fragile, brittle, and resistant to reliability and resilience. What we refer to as software resilience is an adaptation of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) definition of infrastructure resilience:

Software resilience is the ability to reduce the magnitude and/or duration of disruptive events. The effectiveness of a resilient application or infrastructure software depends upon its ability to anticipate, absorb, adapt to, and/or rapidly recover from a potentially disruptive event.1

1.1 Vulnerabilities Abound

The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) Program is part of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), a federally funded research and development center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The center was formed following the Morris worm incident, which brought roughly 10% of Internet systems to a complete halt back in 1988. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) established a mandate for the SEI to set up a center to coordinate communication among experts during computer security emergencies and to help prevent future incidents. Table 1.1 shows CERT statistics on the number of vulnerabilities it has cataloged since 1998. CERT has since stopped publishing these statistics, but it provides the historical data for research value.

Table 1.1

CERT Security Vulnerabilities by Year

Year	Total Vulnerabilities Cataloged
Q1–Q3 2008	6,058
2007	7,236
2006	8,064
2005	5,990
2004	3,780
2003	3,784
2002	4,129
2001	2,437
2000	1,090
1999	417
1998	262

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Table of contents

• Preliminaries
• Preface
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 How Does Software Fail Thee? Let Us Count the Ways
• Chapter 2 Characteristics of Secure and Resilient Software
• Chapter 3 Security and Resilience in the Software Development Life Cycle
• Chapter 4 Proven Best Practices for Resilient Applications
• Chapter 5 Designing Applications for Security and Resilience
• Chapter 6 Programming Best Practices
• Chapter 7 Special Considerations for Embedded Systems, Cloud Computing, and Mobile Computing Devices
• Chapter 8 Security Testing of Custom Software Applications
• Chapter 9 Testing Commercial off-the-Shelf Systems
• Chapter 10 Implementing Security and Resilience Using CLASP
• Chapter 11 Metrics and Models for Security and Resilience Maturity
• Chapter 12 Taking It to the Streets
• Glossary
• Appendix A 2010 CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
• Appendix B Enterprise Security API