37C3 - Writing secure software

Dear viewer, these subtitles were generated
by a machine via the service YouTube
and therefore are (very) buggy.
If you are capable, please help us to
create good quality subtitles:
https://c3subtitles.de/talk/3028 Thanks!

[Music]

um basically textbooks have been written

about it um countless talks have been uh

have been Illuminating all of the errors

of our

ways um and still all those sucky

software is out

there um but

FIFA over here the hero of our show uh

has put out has put all of these best

practices into you know into his work to

try to create a um secure website he's

going to show us how it's done so that

we can all sleep way better at night and

um um and with that template go back and

and secure our own software and so with

that I'm going to hand it right over to

Fifi give him a round of

[Applause]

applause thank you um I have to start

with an apology because I did submit

this talk but it was rejected so the

slides are not at the stage where they

should be these are our slides for a

previous version of the talk it contains

all the material and I tried to update

it more but that destroyed the flow so

we we're stuck with it basically um the

difference was the the audience so while

I expect more developers here the other

audience was more and hackers and

business people so I try to get them

from where they are and uh the main

question usually is Are We There Yet

right so about me you probably probably

seen this before I'm a code auditor by

trade I have a small company and

companies show us their code and I show

them bugs I find in Indians quite easy

but before we start I have a small

celebration to do this actually happened

just a day before the first time I

talked about this uh so kasperski

message they found some mware anded Ed

diet

Lipsy which I have written so this is

like a

[Applause]

Knighthood some of the malware people

know what's good

so um basically the main question when I

talk to customers is uh we spend so much

money on this why isn't it

working and the the answer is you're

you're doing it wrong so um I will try

to show no what exactly is wrong and

there's a small preface here uh people

usually say there's no time to do this

briide and that's just wrong you have

exactly as much time per day as other

people who did great things so you can

do great things too you just just need

to do

it so let's play a little warm-up game

uh it's called how it started how it's

going so let's have a demo round IBM

Watson is revolutionizing 10

Industries and it's going like this

whatever happened to IBM Watson that's a

typical pattern in the security industry

right so here's another one how it

started revolutionize security with AI

right we all know where this is

going right so that's the p

um let's play it security mind sweeper

right so uh everybody here probably

knows who Gartner is they publish

recommendations and they even have a

voting section where people can say this

is the best product in this section

right so let's look at a few of them and

see what happened to people who trusted

Gartner first is a firewall right so how

it started the number one recommendation

is for

net and they have a lot of marketing G

and if you look how it's going it's not

going so

good so let's extend the pattern a bit

why what happened to me in in this

regard so I I don't need a firewall I

don't have any ports open that I need

blocking right so you don't need this

strictly speaking you don't need it next

discipline endpoint protection

so it started with TRX this is the

number one recommendation on Gartner I I

hadn't heard of them there like can make

a feed joint venture or something thing

who cares they also have great marketing

go and then if you look at what happened

it's

like they made it

worse um okay so this didn't apply to me

either because I don't use snake oil

let's see the third one password manager

also very

popular how it started recommended last

pass you probably know where this is

going yeah they got owned and then

people got

owned so um you may notice a pattern

here uh this didn't apply to me because

I deser a password authentication use

public key which has been available for

decades right so small bonus the last

one to

FAA uh Gartner recommends Duo which has

been bought by Cisco but doesn't

matter so if you look at what Duo does

your server asks the cloud for

permission the cloud goes to the

telephone

telephone shows a popup you click yes

and then the cloud tells the server it's

okay you can let them in if you look

really closely you can notice the cloud

doesn't have to do the popup can just

say sure so this comes pre-owned there

is no need to hack anything

here and something many people don't

realize you don't need two Factor if you

have public key that's already the

second

Factor okay

so yeah let's skip over this briefly

Splunk is the the recommend option here

and they make the organization more

resilient um unless you install

[Applause]

it okay um so this one is dear to my

heart because um people start arguing

about whether to install patches and

which patch to install first and it used

to be simple you you look for problems

then you install the patches and then it

a bit more

complicated and the result is this right

that's a famous podcast in in German uh

it's about municipality who got owned by

by ransomware and then had to call the

Army for

help and what you should do I'm having

this for completeness install all

patches immediately but that's a

separate talk right so um you may notice

a pattern here the it security industry

recommends something and if you do it

you're [ __ ] so don't do it um in case

you can't read this this says snake

repellent granules and then there's a

snake sleeping next to

it right so um if we can trust the

recommendations of the industry what

shall we do and um so I had a lot of

time on my hands because I didn't have

to clean up after crappy it security

industry recommendations so what that

what did I do with my

time and uh I decided I need a Blog uh

some time ago now um and I started

thinking what do I need and it's

actually not that much I could have just

shown basically static content a little

search function would be good but it's

optional um I didn't need comments for

legal reasons because people start

posting like uh links to maware or

whatever I don't want that um I don't

need that right so the first version was

actually really easy it was a small

standard web server and I had the the

blog entries a static HTML files one

file per month it was actually really

easy if you want to search you just can

ask Google and limit it to my site so

posting was also easy had a little

script that uh I could run on the server

and I just ssh in and SSH I trust for

authentication so there's no new attack

surface I have that anyway and this is a

great design it's secure it's simple

there's low risk it's also high

performance but you couldn't do a talk

about it at the CCC right so it's too

boring so I started to produce risk in

my

setup so the first idea was I had

written a small web server I could just

implement the blog in the web server

because you know it's my code anyway um

but that has downsides if the the blog

is running in the web server then it can

access all the memory of the web server

in particular it can see the TLs private

key and that I don't want people to

extract right so it can't be a module in

the web server

and the the obvious solution is it the

it has to run in a different user ID on

on Linux I'm using Linux or but any any

Unix or Windows would be the same

basically it runs in a different user ID

and then if you if you take over the

process of the blog because there's some

bug in it you couldn't access the the

TLs

key and while I did that the industry

was doing

this that's like the running gag of this

talk I show all kinds of interesting

things the industry did and then show

what I did

in that time right so um next question

where's the content I could just have

files on disk like static HTML as before

but I think that's not professional

enough right so for a good CCC talk you

need to be more

professional also for a different

project I had just written an elabs

server so I decided to reuse it and uh

while I did that the industry did this I

I took this photo at the airport of

Jerusalem so this is an actual ad it's

not photoshopped right it's for north of

gramman which is a um

military contractor and it's about full

spectrum cyber across all

domains so why would I write my own elab

server mostly because it's small and um

because I'm an auditor by trade I know

that if you want a chance to actually

audit the code it needs to be small

because that's a limited resource the

time you can spend on auditing code

right so postgress is a common SQL

database uh slapd is the the open Lup

implementation of the server and Tiny

Lup is mine and you see it's much slower

uh much

smaller yeah so there was more to this

ad campaign I collected a few funny

images right so um if someone manages to

hack the blog CGI or whatever module I

use to to have connect the blog to the

web server they can open any file that

the blog can read right the uid can read

so um I should probably do something

about that that was the next step and

the industry was starting to think about

vulnerability

[Music]

management so there is a mechanism on

Unix on Linux I did a separate talk

about that uh on the last Congress it's

called Secom and Secom can it's like a

firewall for CS calls so I can use

seccom to block open the open CIS which

is used to open files um but if I have

to use open myself

then um I can't block it right so what

you do about that for example my blog

calls local time which converts unix's

time into the local time zone and for

that it opens a file containing the

description of the uh system time zone

and that's that calls open right so if I

just disabled the open system call from

my blog then it couldn't do the time

translation and uh this is actually an

old problem that also uh applies to set

ID programs and has has applied to them

for decades so what you can do is you

can reorganize your code so before you

block or before you drop privileges

generally speaking you do uh the open

calls in this in this example um and

then you disable open and then you look

at the the data provided by the attacker

because if the attacker or any untrusted

source is trying to hack you it is via

data it gives you right it's the the

environment is compromised so you look

at what kind of uh elements in the

environment are attacker supplied and

before you look at a single bite in them

you do all the dangerous stuff if you

can right so in this case I call local

time once before I drop the open CIS

call and then my lipy will cach the the

time zone data and the next time I call

it after I have looked at the attacker

supplied code there is no need to call

open right so that's a major advantage

of Secom over similar Technologies like

SE Linux where where the all the the the

the um prohibitions on CIS calls are

applied to the whole process so there is

this is an example and you should make

use of it you should look at your

process and you can see if you have the

source code at least you can see which

parts do I need to do before I can drop

Privileges and you move them up right so

that's what I

did um this is actually uh a mockup from

the Estonian cyber security

Center so this is

real okay so um next thought so let's

say someone hacks the blog uh module and

someone else uses the same module but

supplies a

password right this is a common problem

in website in websites there's some kind

of login something you get maybe a

session token or whatever um and if

someone manages to take over the the

middleware or like the server component

they can see uh all other connections

too if they are handled by the same

process right that's a that's a major

problem um and you can do something

about it so that's the good news

here uh and in in my example it led to

me using CGI instead of fast CGI which

is fast CGI is a newer version of CGI

and the idea with fast CGI is that you

don't spawn a new process for every

request but you have like a Unix domain

socket or another socket to a fast CGI

process and that opens maybe a threat

per request or something but um usually

in fast CGI you try to handle the

requests in the same process and then

you can use that process to cach data so

there's a perf advantage to using fast

CGI but for security reasons um I don't

I don't use fast CGI so I can't do

caching right so that's a major downside

and you would expect the block to be

really really slow in the end um so

first thing I need to use CGI instead of

fast CGI and secondly you could still

use debug apis so if you use GDB or

another debugger to to look at another

process they use an API called p trce u

but that's a CIS call so I can use set

comp to disallow pce if I do those two

and the attacker takes over a Blog

process all they can see is the data

they Supply themselves right that's a

major

advantage Okay so Ina is actually in U

agency which I find really disturbing

because they're burning lots of taxpayer

money anyway so let's assume um the

attacker can hack my blog they can still

circumvent any access control I do in

the blog so for example if I have an

admin site or some login site part of

the website um and it's handled through

the same program and the access control

is done in the blog CGI and someone

manages to hack my blog CGI they could

just skip that so um it's really hard to

do access restrictions that can be

circumvented if you do them in your own

code so the solution is not do it in

your own code um I don't do any access

restriction in the blog I do it in the

elab server so if you connect to my blog

and Supply a password then the blog

doesn't know if the password is right or

not right there's an an an for example

there's an interface where you can add

new block entries or you can edit an old

one and for you need to supply

credentials but the block CGI doesn't

know if they are right or not it opens

the connections to the elab server with

that credential and then the elab server

says yes or no so since we uh removed

access to the P SS uh and the the

processes are isolated from each other

that means there is nothing to

circumvent here so if someone hacks my

blog the only Advantage uh they get is

they can do the exact same stuff they

could do before basically they can just

talk to the L server

okay so I'm starting to get into uh

James Bond territory here right with the

attacks they getting more

convoluted right so the industry started

doing threat intelligence feeds which

are useless don't spend money on those

okay so let's say the attacker hacked my

blog and then went to my tiny UB and now

is attacking tiny elab then they can

watch other logins because tiny Elder

handles connections from other instances

of the blog too right so the same

problem we had before we just moved the

gold post a little and we need to

prevent this and the the obvious

solution is to do the same thing we did

with the blog um we have one process of

the elab server per request and then we

just allow P Trace right so now you

can't watch even if you get code

execution inside the elab server you

can't watch what passwords other people

use you can still see okay does some

[ __ ] again you can still see the

password in the UB store right so the

elab server has to has a version of the

password to authenticate against and the

industry practice best practice is to

use salted hashers so the password is

not actually in the

store still if someone manages to attack

tiny elab through the blog they can

extract the hashes and try to crack them

but since I'm the only one adding users

I can control the password complexity so

good luck frood forcing that

right

okay so uh this is actually a real

problem not not for my blog specifically

but for other web services or services

that are reachable from the internet

what if an attacker doesn't want to

steal my data but it wants to encrypt

them so the ransomware what can you do

about that and um my idea was to make

the data store read only so the UB

server has a data store that contains

all the blog entries and let's read only

to the add up process you can only read

from it and if you want to write to it

for example to add a new entry it gets

appended to a second file which I call

the

journal so SQL databases have a similar

concept and they use it to to roll back

transactions I can do the same thing

it's basically a log

file and that means um all the

differences from the last time the store

was created the Ron store all the

differences are sequentially in the log

file in the journal so that that the

performance gets worse the bigger the

journal gets so every now and then I

need to combine the readon part and the

journal to a new bigger readon part and

I do that

manually um because tiny elab couldn't

do it because I didn't allow tiny elab

to write the store right that was part

of the security here and uh so um with

set comp I can just disable whole CIS

calls I can also install filters so I

can say open is allowed but only if you

use o append o append in the open sis

call on Unix means every right you do to

this uh descriptor is automatically

added to the end so I know if someone

manages to to access the tiny Elda

binary and can write to my journal then

the only place the changes can show up

is at the end and that's actually a

really good good thing to have because

it means if someone hacks me and adds

junk to my blog I can only remove at the

end and I'm good again compare that to a

usual SQL database um if someone wrote

to the database you need to in to to

play a backup uh in to restore backup

because they could have changed anything

anywhere right so but tiny adup doesn't

even have file system level permissions

to change anything in the store so I can

re re uh sleep

soundly yeah the industry spent money on

cyber security mesh

architecture right so the journal

integration has to be done by me

manually out of band so it's not

something an automated process does um I

do it manually and when I'm doing it um

because it's not that much data it's

like for a week or two I can just read

it again and see if something doesn't

look

right this may not be available to all

other scenarios but uh you have to

realize if you have bigger data it's

usually not all the data that's big most

of it is usually static and readon and

then you have some logs that are or you

know billing data that grows and grows

but usually there's part of the data and

this is the the part with the you know

um uh identifying information personally

identifying information or you know Bill

billing details that stuff is usually

small and mostly static and you could

use this strategy for that

too well yeah

okay so the attack can still write

garbage to my blog that's still not good

right but since all they can do is a pen

to the journal I can use my text editor

open the journal and truncate at some

point and then I get all my data back

till the point where they started puting

the blog right this is still bad but

it's it's a very good position to be in

if there's an uh emergency because you

can basically investigate calmly first

you turn off right AIS then you you

delete the vandalism and the journal and

um you know you haven't lost anything

because if you want to delete an entry

in the blog you could do that too but

that means at the end of the journal you

append a statement saying delete this

record and I can just remove that and I

get the record back right so there's no

way for someone vandalizing my blog to U

damage any data that was in it before

all they can do is a pen junk at the end

and I can live with that right this is

this is should be the guiding thought

between any security you do um if

someone hacks you you will be in a very

stressful position the boss will be

behind you breathing down your neck are

We Done Yet is it fixed and you want to

have as little to do as possible at that

time you want to to move all the stress

to before you get hacked because then

you have more

time okay the industry did other things

again

um so what if the attacker doesn't write

garbage to the journal but writes some

exploit to the journal that the next

tiny El up instance that reads the

journal gets compromised

by that is a

possibility and that would be

bad so agreed that there still a problem

but uh realize how Preposterous the

scenario is so we are talking about an

attacker who found stable zero day in

the blog and then used that and another

stable zero day in tiny ad up to write

to the journal and then have the

third uh third zero day to compromise

the the journal passing code so I mean

yes it is still a problem but we reduced

the risk

significantly uh and that is what I'm

trying to to tell you here uh it's not

it's not all or nothing it's good enough

if you can half the

risk that's already very important and

you should do it so as much as you can

uh slice off the risk the better the

better off you will be if something

happens right because the smaller the

code is that is still attackable the

more you can audit it and be sure it's

good you show it to your friends and

they can audit it too uh and and you

need to save yourself that time because

it happens every now and then that I get

to get to see the whole code base and

the usual code base for commercial

products is like gigabytes of source

code nobody can read that like I'm I'm

good I'm not that

good so um this is a good place to be in

I think right so the industry was

selling dos mitigation sure whatever so

what happens if someone attacks the web

server that is still a big

problem um and it's

actually uh it it's a full damage right

that's the worst that can happen if

someone manages to attack the web server

they can see all traffic coming through

they can look inside TLS secured

connections and they can sniff all the

passwords so that's really

bad unfortunately there is not too much

you can do about that

um you could do uh um a separation so

this is something people have been

talking about for a while open S AG is

doing this they moved the dangerous

crypto stuff in a second process and use

sandboxing to lock down that process uh

that could be done but nobody has done

it for open SSL yet so so open SSL

doesn't support that um my web server

also supports embed TLS they don't

support that too so I I could spend time

on that and I've been actually um

spending some time already but it's not

it's not ready yet but this would be a

good way to reduce the risk and you may

notice that the the tools I'm using to

reduce risks are actually just a handful

there's not it's not you know it's not

witchcraft I'm I'm not inventing new

ways to look at things I'm doing the

same thing again I'm identifying the

part of the code that's dangerous and

then I think about how I can make that

part smaller maybe put it in a different

process lock it down so we need to do

the same thing with the web server

obviously um but it's an ongoing

process yeah so again whatever um why

haven't I done that yet uh so in my web

server you can it's a build time

decision if you want SSL support or not

and you can see the binary is

significantly bigger if you have SSL and

I'm showing you this because it means

the the bulk of the attack surface is

the SSL code it's not my code so if I if

I can put the SSL code in a different

process they still need to see the the

private key because that's what TLS

needs the private key otherwise it can't

do the crypto so the bug of the attack

surface would still have access to the

key I can still do it because there

might be bucks in my code and not the

SSL code but that's just 5% of the of

the overall attack surface so um

it I will probably do it at some point

but it's I don't expect miracles from it

bugs and open SSL will kill kill me

there's not much I can do about

that okay so I know what you're

thinking what about colel

bugs so I looked at a few of the recent

kernel bugs and it turns out that they

usually apply to SSS that are rarely

used in regular programs and uh because

I'm blocking all the CIS calls I don't

really need none of them apply to me

right and this is a this is a pattern

with Colonel bugs um uh there is a a

project called

Sandstorm um that also uses p trce and

and Secom tracing to reduce the csol U

surface and then puts regular Services

into a Sandbox for for web services and

they uh evaded all kinds of of Kernel

bucks just because of that so this is

like a zero effort thing because

obviously if you have a list of CIS

calls you'd use a white list and you you

have a list of things you are

explicitely low and the rest is is

disabled not the other way around right

so none of the usual kernel bugs apply

to me um because of the the seom stuff I

already do so kernel bugs aren't as big

of a problem as you might think at least

I still have them if I haven't patched

but you can't get to them via the

blog so I have a small confession to

make uh I'm a bit of a troll and that

applies to this project as well so um I

use the worst programming

language I used C right so I'm trolling

the security people and then I'm

trolling the Java people who have been

saying you should use multi-threading

for performance and not have one process

per request so I'm doing actually two

fork and xx per request um I'm trolling

the database people I don't have any

caching I don't have connection pool TOs

and the perf people too because I'm

still faster than most of the regular

Solutions so there is no there's really

no downside if you if you architect your

software to use this kind of thing um it

will be slower than other ways to do it

but most other software isn't as fast

anyway so there's enough Headway that

you can use to do security instead of

performance you will still be

faster so let's recap the the

methodology I used um first I make a

list of all the attacks I can think of

and this means concrete attacks so what

could happen and what would what would

be the problem then right and then I

think for every item on the list I

consider how to prevent this can I

prevent this uh what what I need to do

and then I do it right so that's easy

it's like this the fine man problem

solving algorithm in spirit and this

process is called threat modeling it's

it's like a it's dirty word because it

sounds like there's effort involved and

nobody wants to do it but it's really

it's easy it's just these these steps

you you look at your software you

consider all the ways it could be

attacked and then you consider what you

could do to prevent the attack or in

some cases you can't prevent the attack

and then you say well that's the risk I

have to live with right so that's called

threat moding you should try it it's

awesome and um you saw that I'm trying

to optimize something here I go for a

specific Target in this case I want as

little code as possible

um the more code there is the more bugs

there will be that's an a very old uh

Insight from I think it was originally

in IBM study and they basically found

that the number of bugs in code is a

function of the lines of code in the

code so there's a little more to it but

basically it's true so and it's not just

any code I want to have less of um if

the code is dangerous I particularly

want to have less of it and the the most

important category to to make smaller is

the the code that enforces security

guarantees so like one security

guarantee would be you can't log in if

you don't have the right password right

so the code that checks that I wanted to

be as small as possible um one or two

lines of code if if I can manage it and

then it's obvious if it if it's wrong or

not the more complex the code is the

less less easy would it be to see if

it's correct or not and that's what you

want in the end you want to be sure the

code is correct so how far did I get

it's actually pretty amazing I think um

you can write an elabs server in five

,000 lines of code the blog is 3.5 lines

of kilo lines of code um plus the Ed

client Library plus zet lip um but I'm

only using zet lip to compress not to

decompress so most attack scenarios

doesn't don't apply to to my usage of Z

Li um and the web server is also pretty

slow if you only look at the HTTP code

unfortunately uh it also contains the

SSL Library which is orders of magnitude

more than my code and that's how you

want it you want the biggest risk not to

be in the new code but in an old code

that someone else already audited if you

can manage it right so this is the

optimization strategy try to have as

little dangerous code as possible sounds

like a no-brainer but if you look at

modern software development you will

find out they do the exact opposite pull

in as many Frameworks as as they

can so this strategy is called TCB

minimization you should try it and I

gave a talk about it already it's

actually pretty easy so um I told you

what I did to the to the blog to uh uh

diminish the danger that can be done uh

if someone manages to take it over and

this is actually part of the TCB

minimization process so the blog was a

high risk area and then I took away

Privileges and removed exess checks and

in the end even if I give you remote

code execution in the blog process you

can't do anything you couldn't do before

right so it's no longer part of the TCB

the TCB is the part that uh enforces

security guarantees which the block CGI

doesn't

anymore so that's what you want to do

you want to end up in the smallest TCB

you can possibly manage and uh every

step on the way is good so no step is

too small right if you can shave off

even a little routine do

it this is the minimization part of TCB

minimization right I could I was able to

remove the block from the TCB tiny El up

still still has a risk so I I you saw

the threat model if someone manages to

take over tiny El up they can read the

hashes and try to crack them that's

still bad um but I can live with it

right uh if they vandalize the block I

can undo the damage without going to the

tape Library so that's

good if you compare that to the industry

standard you you will find that my

Approach is much better um usually in

the industry you see platform decisions

done by management not by the techies

and um it's untroubled by expertise or

risk analysis and you you get a

diffusion of responsibility because if

you even if you try to find out who's

responsible for anything you find uh

well it's that team over there but we

don't really know and then you find out

the team dissolved last week and it's

really

horrible and brand new we have ai tools

which is also a diffusion of

responsibility and then you get people

arguing well it's so bad it can't get

any worse let's go to the cloud where

obviously it gets worse

immediately so I prefer my way um I

think in the end it's important to

realize that the the lack of security

you may have in your projects right now

is self-imposed there is no guy with a

shotgun behind you

threatening you can do it you just have

to start right so this is self-imposed

helplessness you can actually help

yourself you just have to start

right how did we get here this is

obviously not a good good place to be

like all the software is crappy and

there's a few it's not just that people

are dumb there's a few reasons for that

so um back in the day you used to have

bespoke applications that were written

for a specific purpose and they used the

waterfall model and you had the

requirements specification and it was

lots of bureaucracy and really horrible

but it also Al meant that you knew what

the application had be had to be able to

do so that means you can make sure

anything else is forbidden if you know

what the application needs to be able to

do you can make sure it doesn't do any

other stuff and that is security if you

think about it deny everything that the

application wasn't supposed to be doing

and then that's what an attacker would

do if they take over the machine right

so if you know beforehand what you're

trying to get to you can actually

implement privilege even architecturally

as I've shown

you now we have more of an Ikea model

you buy parts that are uh designed by

their own teams and the teams designing

the parts don't know what the final

product will look like right in in some

cases even you don't know what the final

product will look like but it's even

worse if you consider that the the the

team building the part you make your

software from doesn't know what it will

be used for so it has to be as generic

as possible Right the more it can be

done with with it the better and that's

the opposite of security right security

means understanding what you need to do

and then disallowing the rest and this

means be as generic as you can the parts

are optimized for genericity Gen what's

the

name genericism I don't know so they are

optimized to be as flexible as possible

and they are chosen by

flexibility the developer of the part

usually has no idea what it would used

for uh and that means you can't do least

privilege because um you don't know what

the privilege will be that's least so

this this is actually a big mess so if

you use Parts programmed by other people

you will have to invest extra effort to

find out what kind of stuff you can make

it not do because it will definitely be

able to do more than you need and the

more you can clamp down the more

security you will have uh it's even

worse if you do Agile development

because then by definition you don't

know what the end result will be so if

you don't know that you can't do

security

lockdown so another argument why we got

here is economics of scale so it used to

be that if you build some kind of device

that needs to do something like I don't

know uh a

microwave then you you find parts and

you combine the parts and you solder

them together and then they solve the

problem but these days uh you don't

solder parts anymore you assemble from

pre-made parts and these are usually

programmable right so a little arm chip

cost like a tenth of a scent so why use

a special part if you can use an arm

chip and then program it but that means

you still need to use software that

actually solves the problem the hardware

is generic and that means the hardware

can be hacked and this is turning out to

be a problem right if you had a break in

in 20 years youo um it it breaked right

but now it's

programmable and people have realized

how bad that is but it is bad right so

that's that will bite Us in the

ass oops so um the response from the

industry has so far been the ostrich

method basically we we install stuff

that we know is untrustworthy and so we

install other stuff on top of it that's

also untrustworthy and then we call it

Telemetry or big data and to some risk

uh logging analysis in in aze or

whatever uh and in the end the attack

surface has mushroomed like a nuclear

explosion right so that's our fault

nobody has forced us to do this you

don't need to do this in your own

projects that's the hopeful message of

this talk in conclusion if you remember

nothing else from this talk remember

that threat modeling is a thing and you

should try it TCB minimization actually

helps least privilege is another facet

of the same thing and if you can uh use

a pendon data storage you should

consider it hm blockchain yeah not

blockchain a pend only data storage it's

not

[Applause]

[Music]

blockchain so two more you two more

slides yeah two more slides sorry I'm an

imposter no problem so the rule of thumb

should be if if the blog of some

unwashed hobbyist from the Internet is

more secure than your it security then

you should improve your it

security right that shouldn't

happen all right so that's all from my

talk I think we still have time for

questions do we yes okay awesome okay

now you can put your hand

[Applause]

together so if you want to ask a

question we have four microphones in the

room 1 2 3 4 and I'm going to take a a

question the first first question from

the internet the internet is saying you

actually got hacked or can you elaborate

on what

happened Yes actually there was an

incident where someone was able to post

stuff to my blog and because I had a

pend only data storage I Shrugged it off

basically so use use a pendon data

storage it's it will save your ass at

some point the problem was a bug in my

uh Access Control lists I had used some

some Access Control list in my alab

server and I had a line in it that I

should have removed but I forgot to

remove it and that meant you could post

without having credentials but um it

happened and it wasn't bad because my

architecture prevented damage um as

people are leaving the room could you

leave very quietly thank you um

microphone number one yeah is there a

second alternative for Windows and Mac

OS a secure alternative well so

basically you can do the the principles

I um I showed in this talk you can do on

those two so usually you will not be

hacked because your your Mac OS or

Windows had a bug I that happens too but

the bigger problem is that the software

you wrote had a bug or that you the

software that you use had a bug so I'm

I'm trying to tell you Linux isn't uh

particularly more secure than Windows

it's just it's basically you can write

secure software and insecure software on

any operating system you should still

use Linux because it has advantages but

if you apply these Tech techniques to

your software it will be secure on on

Mac OS and windows as well right so this

is not for for end users selecting the

software if you select software you have

to trust the

vendor there's no way around that but if

you write your own software then you can

reduce the risk to a point where you can

live with it and sleep soundly sure is

there a a technical alternative or

similar similarity like sa comp for

Windows and Mac OS so can you drop your

privileges after you have opened a file

for example uh uh so for meos I'm not

sure but I know that that free BSD net

BSD and open BSD have an an equivalent

thing I think uh Macos has it too but

I'm I'm not sure about that for Windows

there's are sandboxing methods you can

look at the Chrome source code for

example they have a Sandbox it's open

source you can use that to do this kind

of thing okay thanks so microphone

number two except down that's gone so

microphone number three in that

case this is four I sorry four four yes

um will your next talk be about writing

software secure software in Windows and

if no uh how much assets would you

request to compensate for all the

pain

no it's not a question of

money okay uh microphone one um have you

tried removing unnecessary features from

open

SSL uh Yes actually I've I've done this

pretty pretty early but it's still it's

still much bigger than my code

so um for example op SSL has support for

UDP based TLs but there's a lot of

shared cyers in there you can remove

ciphers you don't need and and that

helps a bit but it's still it's the

biggest part of the web server by far I

think there was an internet question was

there no doesn't look like

yes no yes no no yes okay uh then

microphone

four as someone who is uh connected or

was connected to an industry which has

programming programmable

brakes

um what is your opinion about things

like

mizra well well so there are standards

in the automotive industry for example

like misra

to make sure you write better code and

it's mostly compliance so they give you

rules like um you shouldn't use

recursion in your code for example and

the functions should would be this big

at at most and this is more I mean it

will probably help a bit but it's much

better to to invest in in good

architecture but you may have noticed I

I've said I wrote the code in C and I

said nothing about what I did to make

sure it's it's good code so that's

that's a different dimension that's

orthogonal right

so follow those standards it will it

will make your code a bit better

probably um but it won't solve all the

problems and I think personally you

should do both you should make sure or

try to make sure that there's as little

bugs as possible in your code there's

ways to do that I had to talk about that

too but after you do that you should

still have these kind of

architectural guide guard rails that

keep you on track even if someone

manages to take over the

process so now I think there was an

internet

question yes uh the internet is asking

how would it work to like scale This

truly impressive security architecture

up for more use cases and more like

larger theme or would the theme size and

the feature keep ruin it yes

so oh no oh

[Laughter]

no well I'm

sorry

[Music]

la