Secure Coding: major Web attacks and how to defeat them 2011

This course teaches the students how to develop secure web applications in today’s complex internetworked environment. Students will receive a deep and thorough understanding of the most prevalent and dangerous security defects in today’s applications. Additionally, they will learn practical and actionable guidelines on how to remediate against these common defects in Java/J2EE and how to test for them in their own applications.

This class starts with a description of the security problems faced by today's software developer, as well as a detailed description of the Open Web Application Security Project’s (OWASP) “Top 10” security defects. These defects are studied in instructor-lead sessions as well as in hands-on lab exercises in which each student learns how to actually exploit the defects to “break into” a real Web application. (The labs are performed in safe test environments.)

Remediation techniques and strategies are then studied for each defect. Practical guidelines on how to integrate secure development practices into the software development process are then presented and discussed.