MIT Bug Finder Uncovers Flaws In Web Apps In 64 Seconds (csoonline.com)

itwbennett quotes a report from CSO: A new tool from MIT exploits some of the idiosyncrasies in the Ruby on Rails programming framework to quickly uncover new ones, writes Katherine Noyes. In tests on 50 popular web applications written using Ruby on Rails, the system found 23 previously undiagnosed security flaws, and it took no more than 64 seconds to analyze any given program. Ruby on Rails is distinguished from other frameworks because it defines even its most basic operations in libraries. MIT's researchers took advantage of that fact by rewriting those libraries so that the operations defined in them describe their own behavior in a logical language.

Comments

The Ruby world...

[mi]

Many "cool and new" technologies started out with a rather dismissive and arrogant attitude towards predecessors — only to then encounter the same problems as other did before and have to solve them in a hurry, shooting yourself in the same extremity (with the same gun), and stepping on the same rake.

From my experience, Ruby is especially bad at it. Release 1.9.2 not quite compatible with 1.9.1? What?!

Published packages ("gems") not signed. Huh?

So, when I hear about yet another problem in that world, all I can do is shrug...