Web Hacking: Attacks and Defense

zenomorph writes: "I first heard of this book on amazon.com on a Monday morning, and read the reviews of people who had purchased this book. I noticed that there were no reviews from any person in the web security community had commented on it, either on Amazon or anywhere else (with the exception of two brief comments on the back of the book, of which one was written by the person who wrote the book's foreword). So I decided to pick it up on Friday after I left work and see what it had to offer. After picking up the book I noticed it was co-authored by three people who all work for Foundstone, a very large security company that deals with everything (including web security). This review will cover some of the topics covered in this book, along with things that could or should have been covered in greater detail." Read on for the rest of zenomorph's review. Web Hacking: Attacks and defense author Stuart McClure, Saumil Shah, and Shreeraj Sha pages 492 publisher Addison-Wesley rating 8 reviewer zenomorph ISBN 0201761769 summary Web Application Hacking

Target audience: This book is geared more towards beginners and intermediate users, with a few things the more advanced people will enjoy. It explains concepts and practical examples in an easy to understand manner. Pros:

One portion of the book covered a topic which is rarely mentioned and almost never documented in security texts, which is ASP (Active Server Pages). This primarily covered security involving databases handling and login information. Another rarely documented subject this book covered was ISAPI application security. Additional good points below:

• Good examples of the types of commands an attacker will execute when remote command execution is possible. Also had a nice little attack fingerprint reference in the back. (Appendix D Page 462)

• General Tips and tricks for fingerprinting a web server, and database versions. (pages 182-194) Provides this information based on error messages and URL structure.

• Chapter 12 covers remote command execution threats with Java and Java servers. Definably a book highlight. Not too much documentation currently exists on this ever-growing web technology.

• Chapter 14 covers buffer overflows in a very easy to understand manner; something not easily accomplished for the less tech-savvy. It also walks through a complete example of bad code, to writing and executing the exploit.
• One nice section is the "Cheat Sheet" towards the back of the book which provides the most common improperly used functions in ASP, PHP, Java, and Perl. I did notice it left out the ever popular fopen() function in PHP, which is very popular for attackers to exploit when improperly used (Code inclusion attacks).

• Shows good practical examples of attackers using search engines to help further probe a site.

• Covers SQL and Oracle security. (Direct, and Injection based attacks)

• Web Application server security was covered with examples on BEA Weblogic, and Websphere.

• Provides good examples of using tools such as Netcat, Sam Spade, Teleport Pro, Black Widow, Webcracker, Brutus, Achilles, Cookie Pal, etc.

• Coveres the threats of Internet worms,including the effect on the Internet of Nimda, and Code Red. Gave details of what exactly they did, and how they could spread.

• Chapter 17 is a treat. Covers how attackers avoid IDS systems through the use of SSL, and URL encoding (such as Unicode, 2-byte, 3-Byte, and double encoding.) Also covers how to set up an IDS on SSL via reverse proxies.

Cons: This book was released in August of 2002, but I couldn't find any reference to cross-site scripting. Cross-site scripting isn't a new type of attack. In fact, it has been around since the late 1990's. More gripes below:

• The authors have a tendency to include snippets from IRC conversations. While it's explaining how hackers communicate during attacks I found it a little lame. I'd rather they had mentioned some "hacker" channels, or something along those lines.

• Neither cookie theft nor poisoning is mentioned, while cookie modification is.

• I went to the back of the book hoping to gather some good references for further reading and only got a small links section showing 6 links, none of which where technical documents but instead general web links.

• Web application abuse and spamming aren't covered at all, which is something very important and an ever-growing option for spammers.

• No references to XML-RPC or SOAP were found but the athors do briefly mention Microsoft's .NET technology without providing any code examples.

• Lack of web application wrappers and security. CGIWrap and Suexec aren't mentioned anywhere. Nothing about chrooting webservers, or applications for additional security were found.

• Apache's "Tomcat" server isn't mentioned anywhere, with the exception of an exploit mentioned in Appendix D. (Source Code, File, and Directory Disclosure Cheat sheet)

• Not a big complaint but it would have been nice if Python or TCL were covered.

Closing:

On a scale of one to ten I give this book an eight. This review was written to give you an idea of the contents, or lack thereof. Perhaps this will help you to decide if this book is what you're looking for, or a waste of time.

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Comments

Re:FUD

[Iffy Bonzoolie]

i might think there is only one door into the server room snce thats what the architects told me, but unless i go and look, how do i know for sure?

Well, how can you know anything for sure, really? I mean, all your senses could be being decieved. You could be a brain in a tank. You could be a computer simulation. You could be God. Until you get this sorted out, I think the whole question of whether the server room has two doors is moot.

-If

Score 5 for this come on !!!!!

[DJ FirBee]

While I agree in a foolishly pseudo intellectual slashdot way that electricity is important, its also important to realize that electricity is dangerous as well.... Mod this up sucker.