OWASP Newsletter 12

OWASP Newsletter #12 (01-Feb-2008)
Welcome to the 12th edition of the OWASP Newsletter, featuring the OWASP AppSec Europe 2008 Call for Papers and the release of ESAPI v1.1.

Don’t forget, there are only a few weeks left until the OWASP Australia AppSec 2008 Conference. The conference is being held at the Gold Coast Convention Center in Queensland, Australia, and will include a Training day on February 27th, and presentations on the 28th and 29th. Register Now!

I would like to welcome OWASP's newest chapters in Jordan, Indianapolis and Eugene.

As always, if you have any content to add to the next edition, please feel free to add it directly to its WIKI page OWASP Newsletter 13.

Alison McNamee - OWASP Operations Director - alison.mcnamee@owasp.org

Featured Item: OWASP AppSec Europe 2008 call for papers and refereed papers track
The Call for Papers for the OWASP AppSec Europe 2008 Conference is now open! The OWASP AppSec conferences bring together application security experts and software engineers from all over the world. Industry and academia meet to discuss open problems and new solutions in application security. The conferences offer researchers and practitioners a set of tutorials, keynotes, and invited presentations.

The conference will have the usual two tracks on application security. The first track will focus on business aspects and also provide some entry level OWASP topics. The second track wil focus on more technical and advanced OWASP topics. This year the referereed papers track will be extended to 2 days.

Call for topics-papers
OWASP is seeking for presentations on Application Security and related OWASP projects from the community. Over the conference program there are 9 technical and 9 business presentation sessions running approximately 1 hour in length each.The call for topics is online now.

Refereed papers track
As in the previous editions, the OWASP AppSec Europe 2008 conference will feature a refereed papers track. The call for papers is online now.

Submissions are due March 1!

Featured Project: ESAPI v1.1
ESAPI v1.1 is now available! Version 1.1 Major changes include:

1)	ESAPIFilter – Added a new class that can be put in front of most applications that handles ESAPI busywork including login, logging requests, URL access check, HTTP request validation (global rules), set no cache headers, set content type, and threadlocal cleanup.

2)	AccessReferenceMap – Added addDirectReference and removeDirectReference

3)	Authenticator – Added Request and Response ThreadLocals to allow logout from the IntrusionDetector

4)	Added “context” parameter to all validation calls so that log messages can indicate where bad data came from

5)	Encoder – Move canonicalize method from Validator to Encoder as it seems to fit with all the encoding methods better.

6)	Encryptor – Digital signature keypair is now derived from the master secret.

7)	HTTPUtilities – Add safe versions of encodeURL and encodeRedirectURL to prevent session rewriting.

8)	HTTPUtilities – Add methods to encrypt/decrypt the querystring. Also methods to encrypt/decrypt state into a cookie.

9)	HTTPUtilities – Rename safe versions of dangerous methods in Java to all start with “safe”, like safeSendRedirect, safeSendForward, safeAddHeader, safeAddCookie, safeEncodeURL, safeSetContent.

10)	Validator – Add getValidSafeHTML method that invokes OWASP AntiSamy to clean up rich content that might contain an attack.

11)	HTTPUtilities – Added pragma nocache to the list of HTTP headers sent for setNoCacheHeaders

12)	Many minor fixes, documentation enhancements, and tweaks.

Learn more on the Project Home Page!

New Pages

 * ESAPI-Building
 * Shared Objects
 * SandBox Security Model
 * CFPFAQ
 * OWASP AppSec Europe 2008 Agenda
 * OWASP AppSec Europe 2008 Training
 * Struts Validation in validator.xml using an ActionForm

New Chapter Pages

 * Jordan
 * Indianapolis
 * Eugene

Updated pages

 * Backend Security Project
 * OWASP Project Assessment
 * SpoC 2007 Attacks Reference Guide
 * Spring of Code 2007 Projects
 * WebScarab Differences Classic vs. NG

Update Chapter pages

 * Cincinnati
 * Sacramento
 * New Zealand
 * Brazil
 * Helsinki
 * Austin
 * NYNJMetro
 * Rochester
 * Boulder
 * Italy
 * Seattle

OWASP references in the Media

 * Bruce Schneier's Speech at OWASP
 * Does your enterprise suck at finding top talent?
 * Snake Bytes
 * Another myspace XSS through an API
 * OWASP Top 10 - Pune Chapter
 * OWASP Java Gotchas
 * Free books to help secure your web applications
 * OWASP San Antonio Presentation about Static Analysis