Top 10 Lists for Designing and Writing Secure and Safe Software

If you care about writing secure code, should know all about these Top 10 lists:

OWASP Top 10

The OWASP Top 10 is a community-built list of the 10 most common and most dangerous security problems in online (especially web) applications. Injection flaws, broken authentication and session management, XSS and other nasty security bugs.

These are problems that you need to be aware of and look for, and that you need to prevent in your design and coding. The Top 10 explains how to test for each kind of problem to see if your app is vulnerable (including common attack scenarios), and basic steps you can take to prevent each problem.

If you’re working on mobile apps, take time to understand the OWASP Top 10 Mobile list.

IEEE Top Design Flaws

The OWASP Top 10 is written more for security testers and auditors than for developers. It’s commonly used to classify vulnerabilities found in security testing and audits, and is referenced in regulations like PCI-DSS.

The IEEE Center for Secure Design, a group of application security experts from industry and university researchers, has taken a different approach. They have come up with a Top 10 list that focuses on identifying and preventing common security mistakes in architecture and design.

This list includes good design practices such as: earn or give, but never assume trust; identify sensitive data and how they should be handled; understand how integrating external components changes your attack surface. The IEEE’s list should be incorporated into design patterns and used in design reviews to try and deal with security issues early.

OWASP Proactive Controls

IEEE’s approach is principle-based – a list of things that you need to think about in design, in the same way that you think about things like simplicity and encapsulation and modularity.

The OWASP Proactive Controls, originally created by security expert Jim Manico, is written at the developer level. It is a list of practical, concrete things that you can do as a developer to prevent security problems in coding and design. How to parameterize queries, and encode or validate data safely and correctly. How to properly store passwords and to implement a forgot password feature. How to implement access control – and how not to do it.

It points you to Cheat Sheets and other resources for more information, and explains how to leverage the security features of common languages and frameworks, and how and when to use popular, proven security libraries like Apache Shiro and the OWASP Java Encoder.

Katy Anton and Jason Coleman have mapped all of these controls together (the OWASP Top 10, OWASP Proactive Controls and the IEEE Security Flaws), showing how the OWASP Proactive Controls implement safe design practices from the IEEE list and how they prevent or mitigate OWASP Top 10 risks.

You can use these maps to look for gaps in your application security practices, in your testing and coding, and in your knowledge, to identify areas where you can learn and improve.