Tag Archives: security

Secure by Design

Posted on March 22, 2020 | 4 comments

I really like Secure by Design. The key idea is that there is a big overlap between secure code and good software design. Code that is strict, clear and focused will be easier to reason about, and will have fewer bugs. This in turn makes it less vulnerable to attacks. This is easy to say, but Secure by Design is full of techniques for how to actually do this. Here are the ideas from the book that I liked the most.

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Posted in Learning, Programming

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Social Engineering from Kevin Mitnick

Posted on December 27, 2015 | 3 comments

GitWI recently finished reading Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick. It is the story of Mitnick’s hacking career, from the start in his teens, through becoming the FBI’s most wanted hacker, to spending years in jail before finally being released. It’s a fascinating book that at times reads like a thriller. One of the things that struck me when reading it was how often he used social engineering to gain access to systems. Here are three examples of what he did, and what we can learn from them. Continue reading →

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Posted in Learning, Work

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Coursera Course Review: Software Security

Posted on October 20, 2015 | 6 comments

I just finished taking the course Software Security from the University of Maryland via Coursera. It was a relatively easy course (at least if you know C) that gave an overview of the following areas: buffer overflows and other memory attacks, web security (including SQL injection, CSRF and XSS), secure design, static analysis, symbolic execution, fuzzing and penetration testing. The instructor, professor Michael Hicks, was one of the more pedagogical lecturers I have listened to, and the whole course was quite enjoyable. Continue reading →

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Posted in Learning, Programming

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