When making new software systems, security testing should always be included in the process. In this thesis, attacks were identified and performed against a system consisting of two servers and an Android application. A penetration test was also performed against parts of the system. If an attack was successful, this was considered a vulnerability. The attacks that were identified and performed were a NoSQL injection attack a man-in-the-middle attack and reverse engineering. Through the man-in-the-middle attack and reverse engineering, breaching security properties such as confidentiality and integrity was possible. The NoSQL injection attack was not successful in breaching neither. No results from these could be used to exploit the system further. Countermeasures were taken to secure against the discovered vulnerabilities, and new instances of the attacks were performed after this as well. The overall conclusion is that the system is now secure against our implementations of the attacks performed in this thesis.

En ce qui concerne le développement des technologies informatique, les systèmes et les réseaux informatiques sont intensément utilisés dans la vie quotidienne. Ces systèmes sont responsables de nombreuses tâches essentielles pour notre communauté sociale (par exemple, système de traitement médical, E-Commerce, Système d'avion, système de vaisseau spatial, etc.). Quand ces systèmes cessent de fonctionner ou sont corrompus, les pertes économiques peuvent atteindre des sommes inacceptables. Pour éviter ces situations, les systèmes doivent être sécurisés avant leur installation. Alors que la plupart de ces systèmes sont mis en œuvre à partir de spécifications des protocoles, les problèmes de vérification de la sécurité de systèmes concrets renvient à vérifier la sécurité de l'implémentation de ces protocoles. Dans cette thèse, nous nous concentrons sur les méthodes de vérification de la sécurité des implémentations des protocoles et nous sommes intéressés à deux principaux types d'attaques sur les réseaux : Déni de service (DoS) et attaque de Protocol d’authentification. Nous étudions les caractéristiques de ces attaques et les méthodes de vérification formelles. Puis nous proposons modèle étendu de IOLTS et les algorithmes correspondants à la génération de les cas de test pour la vérification de sécurité automatique. Afin d'éviter les explosions d'état possibles, nous formalisons également les expériences de sécurité du testeur comme le « Objectif de Sécurité » pour contrôler la génération de test sur la volée. Parallèlement, une méthode d'analyse basée sur le modèle pour la Systèmes de Détection d'intrusion Anomalie (Anomaly IDS) est également proposée dans cette thèse, ce qui peut améliorer les capacités de détecter des anomalies de l'IDS. Ces méthodes de vérification proposées sont mises en évidence par l'étude de RADIUS protocole et un outil intégré de graphique est également proposé pour facilement les opérations de la génération de test. / Regarding the development of computer technologies, computer systems have been deeply used in our daily life. Those systems have become the foundation of our modern information society. Some of them even take responsibilities for many essential and sensitive tasks (e.g., Medical Treatment System, E-Commerce, Airplane System, Spaceship System, etc.). Once those systems are executed with problems, the loss on the economy may reach an unacceptable number. In order to avoid these disappointing situations, the security of the current systems needs to be verified before their installations. While, most of the systems are implemented from protocol specifications, the problems of verifying the security of concrete system can be transformed to verify the security of protocol implementation. In this thesis, we focus on the security verification methods of protocol implementations and we are interested with two main types of network attacks: Denis-of-Services (DoS) attacks and Protocol Authentication attacks. We investigate the features of these attacks and the existed formal verification methods and propose two extended models of IOLTS and the corresponding algorithms to generate the security verification test cases automatically. In order to avoid the possible state explosions, we also formalize the security experiences of the tester as Security Objective to control the test generation on-the-fly. Meanwhile, a modeled based Anomaly Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) analysis method is also proposed in this thesis, which can enhance the detect abilities of Anomaly IDS. These proposed verification methods are demonstrated with the case study of RADIUS protocol and an integrated GUI tool is also proposed to simply the operations of test generation.

Agile Softwareentwicklung steht mit seinen Prinzipien für offene Kollaboration, leichtgewichtige Rahmenwerke und schnelle Anpassung an Änderungen. Mit diesen Charakteristika konnte sich Problemen und Unzufriedenheit in der traditionellen Software-Entwicklung gewidmet werden. Auf der Seite der IT-Sicherheit haben sich allerdings vielfältige Herausforderungen offenbart. Mit Static Application Security Testing (SAST) und Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) wurden erste Lösungsansätze dafür geliefert. Eine zufriedenstellende Möglichkeit zur Integration von Security-Testing in agile Softwareentwicklung, insbesondere im Cloud-Kontext, stellen diese allerdings nicht dar. Die vorliegende Arbeit soll unter folgender Fragestellung bearbeitet werden: Wie kann ein praktisches Konzept zur Betrachtung der Sicherheit von Anwendungs-Code, Container und Cluster innerhalb von agilen Entwicklungszyklen realisiert werden, wenn ein metadatenbasiertes Testverfahren verwendet werden soll? Das Ziel teilt sich damit in die Konzeption und Realisierung von zwei Aspekten: das metadatenbasierte Security-Testing von Code/Container/Cluster und den Entwicklungsablauf zur Anwendung des Testing-Verfahrens. Ein Fallbeispiel der Webentwicklung wurde zur qualitativen Evaluation eines Prototypen herangezogen, welcher mittels Python und GitLab umgesetzt wurde. Nach Erläuterung der Rahmenbedingungen, konnten konkrete Szenarien eines Entwicklungsprozesses durchlaufen werden. Die qualitative Untersuchung zeigte eine erfolgreiche Erkennung von Schwachstellen unterschiedlicher Kategorien (z.B. Broken Access Control). Insgesamt konnte eine gute Einbettung in den beispielhaften Entwicklungsablauf beobachtet werden. Der Aufwand für die Pflege der Metadaten ist nicht zu vernachlässigen, jedoch sollte dieser aufgrund der Orientierung am etablierten OpenAPI Schema nicht zu stark gewichtet werden. Dies gilt insbesondere dann, wenn durch den Einfluss von Metadaten Mehrwerte (Durchführbarkeit, Schnelligkeit, Komfortabilität) generiert werden können.:1 Einleitung 1.1 Problembeschreibung 1.2 Zielstellung 1.3 Stand der Technik und Entwicklungsmethoden 1.4 Methodik 2 Theoretische und Technische Grundlagen 2.1 Grundlagen der agilen Software-Entwicklung 2.2 GitLab 2.3 Grundlagen zum metadatengestützten Security-Testing 3 Konzeption 3.1 Low-Level Modell (Testablauf) 3.2 Synthese der beispielhaften Testfälle 3.3 Beschreibungsdatei 3.4 High-Level Modell (Entwicklungsablauf) 4 Implementation 4.1 Testablauf 4.2 CI/CD Pipeline 4.3 Fallbeispiel der agilen Softwareentwicklung 5 Auswertung und Ausblick

Garantir la sécurité d’une application tout au long de son cycle de vie est une tâche fastidieuse. Le choix, l’implémentation et l’évaluation des solutions de sécurité est difficile et sujette a des erreurs. Les compétences en sécurité ne sont pas répondues dans toutes les équipes de développement. Afin de réduire ce manque de compétences en sécurité, les développeurs ont a leurs disposition une multitude de documents décrivant des problèmes de sécurité et des solutions requises (i.e., vulnérabilités, attaques, principes de sécurité, patrons sécurité, etc.). Abstraites et informelles, ces documents sont fournis par des sources différentes et leur nombre est en constante croissance. Les développeurs sont noyés dans une multitude de documents ce qui fait obstruction à leur capacité à choisir, implémenter et évaluer la sécurité d’une application. Cette thèse aborde ces questions et propose un ensemble de méthodes pour aider les développeurs à choisir, implémenter et évaluer les solutions de sécurité face aux problèmes de sécurité. Ces problèmes sont matérialisés par les failles, les vulnérabilités, les attaques, etc. et les solutions fournies par des patrons de sécurité. Cette thèse introduit en premier une méthode pour aider les développeurs dans l’implémentation de patrons de sécurité et l’estimation de leur efficacité face aux vulnérabilités. Puis elle présente trois méthodes associant les patrons de sécurité, les vulnérabilités, les attaques, etc. au sein d’une base de connaissance. Cette dernière permet une extraction automatique de classifications de patrons et améliore la rapidité et la précision des développeurs dans le choix des patrons de sécurité face à une vulnérabilité ou une attaque. En utilisant la base de connaissance, nous présentons une méthode pour aider les développeurs dans la modélisation des menaces ainsi que la générations et l’exécution des cas de test de sécurité. La méthode est évaluée et les résultats montrent que la méthode améliore l’efficacité, la compréhensibilité et la précision des développeurs dans le choix des patrons de sécurité et d’écriture des cas de test de sécurité. / Ensuring the security of an application through its life cycle is a tedious task. The choice, the implementation and the evaluation of security solutions is difficult and error prone. Security skills are not common in development teams. To overcome the lack of security skills, developers and designers are provided with a plethora of documents about security problems and solutions (i.e, vulnerabilities, attacks, security principles, security patterns, etc.). Abstract and informal, these documents are provided by different sources, and their number is constantly growing. Developers are drown in a sea of documentation, which inhibits their capacity to design, implement, and the evaluate the overall application security. This thesis tackles these issues and presents a set of approaches to help designers in the choice, the implementation and the evaluation of security solutions required to overcome security problems. The problems are materialized by weaknesses, vulnerabilities, attacks, etc. and security solutions are given by security patterns.This thesis first introduces a method to guide designers implement security patterns and assess their effectiveness against vulnerabilities. Then, we present three methods associating security patterns, attacks, weaknesses, etc. in a knowledge base. This allows automated extraction of classifications and help designers quickly and accurately select security patterns required to cure a weakness or to overcome an attack. Based on this nowledge base, we detaila method to help designers in threat modeling and security test generation and execution. The method is evaluated and results show that the method enhances the comprehensibility and the accuracy of developers in the security solutions choice, threat modeling and in the writing of security test cases.

abstract: Access control is necessary for information assurance in many of today's applications such as banking and electronic health record. Access control breaches are critical security problems that can result from unintended and improper implementation of security policies. Security testing can help identify security vulnerabilities early and avoid unexpected expensive cost in handling breaches for security architects and security engineers. The process of security testing which involves creating tests that effectively examine vulnerabilities is a challenging task. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) has been widely adopted to support fine-grained access control. However, in practice, due to its complexity including role management, role hierarchy with hundreds of roles, and their associated privileges and users, systematically testing RBAC systems is crucial to ensure the security in various domains ranging from cyber-infrastructure to mission-critical applications. In this thesis, we introduce i) a security testing technique for RBAC systems considering the principle of maximum privileges, the structure of the role hierarchy, and a new security test coverage criterion; ii) a MTBDD (Multi-Terminal Binary Decision Diagram) based representation of RBAC security policy including RHMTBDD (Role Hierarchy MTBDD) to efficiently generate effective positive and negative security test cases; and iii) a security testing framework which takes an XACML-based RBAC security policy as an input, parses it into a RHMTBDD representation and then generates positive and negative test cases. We also demonstrate the efficacy of our approach through case studies. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Computer Science 2014

How secure is your application? How can you evaluate if it is secure? The threats are many and may be hard to find. In a world where things are more and more automated; how does manual labour contribute to security auditing applications? This study aims to assess two proof of concept Android client-server applications, developed by students to suit the needs of a fictitious Police Department and Fire Department, respectively. The approach is unconventional yet supported by well-established theory. The gist of a vulnerability assessment methodology initially developed to assess the security of middleware is followed and applied to the entire architecture of these client-server applications. How the manual labour contributed to the end results, in comparison to the use of automated tools and a list of known threats, is then evaluated.   It is concluded that the applications encompass multiple of the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10 Mobile Risks and that automated tools find most of those vulnerabilities. However, relying on automation may lead to a false sense of security, which in effect may cause developers to lose understanding of why vulnerabilities occur and how they should be mitigated. Understanding how the design and architecture of the application influence its security is key.   As of Android 9.0+, default is that applications use SSL encrypted communication. Only 40% of Android users are in 2020 affected by this change according to Android studio developer information, leaving a majority of users unaware of if or how their data is being protected, also observed in analysis results from this thesis work. One should consider if or how to inform users of how their data is being handled, not only in newer Android versions or regarding SSL communication.    This work also shows that developers' decisions may be greatly affected by time pressed situations, which is reflected upon in the last chapter. Another important finding was that the third-party software Sinch, which enabled the use of voice and video communication in one of the applications, sent IP addresses and usernames of the users in clear text during the binding request, when the Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN) protocol was used.

In recent years, companies and organizations have increasingly integrated software security testing into the software development life cycle using DevOps practices. The current integration approach introduces multiple challenges in an information technology environment that consists of a large number of software development projects and multiple software security testing tools. This thesis aims to address these challenges by proposing a microservice-based framework to unify application security testing. The thesis first identifies the challenges, then proposes a design for a framework based on relevant literature and common characteristics of application security testing tools. The main components of the proposed framework are implemented and evaluated. The evaluation result shows that the framework offers many benefits: more secure credential management process, reduced execution time for Continuous Integration (CI) pipelines, and more efficient project onboarding and management. Furthermore, the integration of the proposed framework does not introduce major security threats to the current environment. / Under de senaste åren har företag och organisationer i allt högre grad integrerat testning av programvarusäkerhet i livscykeln för programvaruutveckling med hjälp av DevOps-metoder. Den nuvarande integrationsmetoden medför flera utmaningar i en informationsteknisk miljö som består av ett stort antal programvaruutvecklingsprojekt och flera verktyg för testning av programvarusäkerhet. Detta examensarbete syftar till att ta itu med dessa utmaningar genom att föreslå en mikrotjänstbaserat ramverk för enhetlig testning av programsäkerhet. I arbetet identifieras först utmaningarna och därefter föreslås en konstruktion baserad på relevant litteratur och gemensamma egenskaper hos verktyg för testning av applikationssäkerhet. De viktigaste komponenterna i det föreslagna ramverket implementeras och utvärderas. Utvärderingsresultatet visar att ramverket erbjuder många fördelar: säkrare process för hantering av autentiseringsuppgifter, kortare genomförandetid för Continuous Integration (CI)-pipelines och effektivare projektstart och -hantering. Dessutom medför integrationen av det föreslagna ramverket inga större säkerhetshot i den nuvarande miljön.

It is well-established that machine learning techniques have been used with great success in other domains and has been leveraged to deal with sources of evolving abuse, such as spam. This study aims to determine whether machine learning techniques can be used to create a model that detects vulnerability scanning attacks using proprietary real-world data collected from tCell, a web application firewall. In this context, a vulnerability scanning attack is defined as an automated process that detects and classifies security weaknesses and flaws in the web application. To test the hypothesis that machine learning techniques can be used to create a detection model, twenty four models were trained. The models showed a high level of precision and recall, ranging from 91% to 0.96% and 85% to 0.93%, respectively. Although the classification performance was strong, the models were not calibrated sufficiently which resulted in an underconfidence in the predictions. The results can therefore been viewed as a performance baseline. Nevertheless, the results demonstrate an advancement over the simplistic threshold-based techniques developed in the early days of the internet, but require further research and development to tune and calibrate the models. / Det är väletablerat att tekniker för maskininlärning har använts med stor framgång inom andra domäner och har utnyttjats för att hantera källor till växande missbruk, såsom spam. Denna studie syftar till att avgöra om maskininlärningstekniker kan tillämpas för att skapa en modell som upptäcker sårbarhets-skanningsattacker med hjälp av proprietär data som samlats in från tCell, en webbapplikationsbrandvägg. I detta sammanhang definieras en sårbarhetsskanningsattack som en automatiserad process som upptäcker och klassificerar säkerhetsbrister och brister i webb-applikationen. För att testa hypotesen att maskininlärningstekniker kan användas för att skapa en detektionsmodell, tränades tjugofyra modeller. Modellerna visade en hög nivå av precision och sensitivitet, från 91% till 0,96% och 85% till 0,93%, respektive. Även om klassificeringsprestandan var god, var modellerna inte tillräckligt kalibrerade, vilket resulterade i ett svagt förtoende för förutsägelserna. De presenterade resultaten kan därför ses som en prestationsbaslinje. Resultaten visar ett framsteg över de förenklade tröskelbaserade teknikerna som utvecklades i begynnelsen av internet, men kräver ytterligare forskning och utveckling för att kalibrera modellerna.

The popularity of the internet has made the use of web applications ubiquitous and essential to the daily lives of people, businesses and governments. Web servers and web applications are commonly used to handle tasks and data that can be critical and highly valuable, making them a very attractive target for attackers and a vector for successful attacks that are aimed at the application layer. Existing misuse and anomaly-based detection and prevention techniques fail to cope with the volume and sophistication of new attacks that are continuously appearing, which suggests that there is a need to provide new additional layers of protection. This work aims to design a new layer of defense based on deception that is employed in the context of web application-layer traffic with the purpose of detecting and preventing attacks. The proposed design is composed of five deception strategies: Deceptive Comments, Deceptive Request Parameters, Deceptive Session Cookies, Deceptive Status Codes and Deceptive JavaScript. The strategies were implemented as a software artifact and their performance evaluated in a testing environment using a custom test script, the OWASP ZAP penetration testing tool and two vulnerable web applications. Deceptive Parameter strategy obtained the best security performance results, followed by Deceptive Comments and Deceptive Status Codes. Deceptive Cookies and Deceptive JavaScript got the poorest security performance results since OWASP ZAP was unable to detect and use deceptive elements generated by these strategies. Operational performance results showed that the deception artifact could successfully be implemented and integrated with existing web applications without changing their source code and adding a low operational overhead.

This master’s thesis explores ways to uncover and exploit vulnerabilities in Android applications by introducing a novel approach to security testing. The research question focuses on discovering an effective method for detecting vulnerabilities related to the context of an application. The study begins by reviewing recent papers on Android security flaws affecting application in order to guide our tool creation. Thus, we are able to introduce three Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) for Model-Based Security Testing (MBST): Context Definition Language (CDL), Context-Driven Modelling Language (CDML), and Vulnerability Pattern (VPat). These languages provide a fresh perspective on evaluating the security of Android apps by accounting for the dynamic context that is present on smartphones and can greatly impact user security. The result of this work is the development of VPatChecker[1], a tool that detects vulnerabilities and creates abstract exploits by integrating an application model, a context model, and a set of vulnerability patterns. This set of vulnerability patterns can be defined to represent a wide array of vulnerabilities, allowing the tool to be indefinitely updated with each new CVE. The tool was evaluated on the GHERA benchmark, showing that at least 38% (out of a total of 60) of the vulnerabilities in the benchmark can be modelled and detected. The research underscores the importance of considering context in Android security testing and presents a viable and extendable solution for identifying vulnerabilities through MBST and DSLs. / Detta examensarbete utforskar vägar för att hitta och utnyttja sårbarheter i Android-appar genom att introducera ett nytt sätt att utföra säkerhetstestning. Forskningsfrågan fokuserar på att upptäcka en effektiv metod för att detektera sårbarheter som kan härledas till kontexten för en app. Arbetet inleds med en översikt av nyliga forskningspublikationer om säkerhetsbrister som påverkar Android-appar, vilka vägleder utvecklingen av ett verktyg. Vi introducerar tre domänspecifika språk (DSL) för modellbaserad testning (MBST): CDL, CDML och VPat. Dessa språk ger ett nytt perspektiv på säkerheten för Android-appar genom att ta hänsyn till den dynamiska kontext som finns på smarta mobiltelefoner och som kan starkt påverka användarsäkerheten. Resultatet av arbetet är utveckling av VPatChecker[1], ett verktyg som upptäcker sårbarheter och skapar abstrakta sätt att utnyttja dem i en programmodell, en kontextmodell, och en mängd av sårbarhetsmönster. Denna sårbarhetsmönstermängd kan defineras så att den representerar ett brett spektrum av sårbarheter, vilket möjliggör för verktyger att uppdateras med varje ny CVE.Verktyget utvärderades på datamängden GHERA, vilket visade att 38% (av totalt 60) av alla sårbarheter kunde modelleras och upptäckas. Arbetet understryker vikten av att ta hänsyn till kontext i säkerhetstestning av Android-appar och presenterar en praktisk och utdragbar lösning för att hitta sårbarheter genom MBST and DSLs. / Ce mémoire de maîtrise explore les moyens de découvrir et d’exploiter les vulnérabilités des applications Android en introduisant une nouvelle approche des tests de sécurité. La question de recherche se concentre sur la découverte d’une méthode efficace pour détecter les vulnérabilités liées au contexte d’une application. L’étude commence par l’examen de documents récents sur les failles de sécurité des applications Android afin de guider la création de notre outil. Nous sommes ainsi en mesure d’introduire trois Langages dédié (DSL) pour des Tests de Sécurité Basés sur les Modèles (MBST) : Langage de Définition de Contexte (CDL), Langage de Modélisation Déterminée par le Contexte (CDML) et Motif de Vulnérabilité (VPat). Ces langages offrent une nouvelle perspective sur l’évaluation de la sécurité des applications Android en tenant compte du contexte dynamique présent sur les smartphones et qui peut avoir un impact important sur la sécurité de l’utilisateur. Le résultat de ce travail est le développement de VPatChecker[1], un outil qui détecte les vulnérabilités et crée des exploits abstraits en intégrant un modèle d’application, un modèle de contexte et un ensemble de modèles de vulnérabilité. Cet ensemble de modèles de vulnérabilité peut être défini pour représenter un large éventail de vulnérabilités, ce qui permet à l’outil d’être indéfiniment mis à jour avec chaque nouveau CVE. L’outil a été testé sur le benchmark GHERA[2] et montre qu’un total d’au moins 38% (sur un total de 60) des vulnérabilités peut être modélisé et détecté. La recherche souligne l’importance de prendre en compte le contexte dans les tests de sécurité Android et présente une solution viable et extensible pour identifier les vulnérabilités par le biais de MBST et DSLs.