Alexander Pirker

101 Typical Security Pitfalls

A number like 257 silently becomes 1, breaking your cryptography and leaking secrets. Discover the subtle dangers of implicit type casting.

101 Typical Security Pitfalls
#1about 3 minutes

Defining the context of application security

Security is not absolute and must be evaluated based on the application type, environment, data sensitivity, and performance constraints.

#2about 2 minutes

Understanding the impact of major vulnerabilities

Recent widespread vulnerabilities like Log4Shell and Spring4Shell demonstrate the critical need for proactive security in software development.

#3about 3 minutes

Preventing XSS by sanitizing on the backend

Client-side input sanitization is easily bypassed, so all user-provided data must be sanitized on the backend to prevent XSS attacks.

#4about 4 minutes

Preventing remote code execution from poor input validation

Failing to validate input parameters against an allowlist can lead to command injection, allowing an attacker to open a reverse shell.

#5about 4 minutes

Preventing denial of service attacks from service crashes

Supplying malformed data, like a public key of the wrong length, can trigger a panic in a library and cause a denial-of-service attack.

#6about 4 minutes

How data type downcasting can break cryptography

Implicitly downcasting a larger integer to a smaller type like a byte can lead to information leakage by causing index collisions.

#7about 4 minutes

Preventing information leakage from out-of-bounds memory reads

Failing to validate the length parameter in a memory copy operation can lead to an out-of-bounds read, leaking sensitive stack memory.

#8about 3 minutes

Four key principles for writing secure code

Developers should prioritize input data sanitation, careful data type selection, proper memory management, and graceful error handling.

#9about 1 minute

Q&A on common pitfalls and sanitization tools

The most common security pitfall is XSS from frontend bypasses, and DOMPurify is a recommended tool for HTML sanitization.

Related jobs
Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.

d

Saby Company
Delebio, Italy

Junior

job ad

Saby Company
Delebio, Italy

Intermediate

Featured Partners

Related Articles

View all articles
CH
Chris Heilmann
Dev Digest 138 - Are you secure about this?
Hello there! This is the 2nd "out of the can" edition of 3 as I am on vacation in Greece eating lovely things on the beach. So, fewer news, but lots of great resources. Many around the topic of security. Enjoy! News and ArticlesGoogle Pixel phones t...
Dev Digest 138 - Are you secure about this?
CH
Chris Heilmann
Dev Digest 129 - Now that's what I call private data!
News and ArticlesAfter declaring Google a monopoly there are now considerations to force it to break up - isn't that what the whole Alphabet thing was about? In the last act of Crowdstrike coverage here, they released a deep analysis of the outage th...
Dev Digest 129 - Now that's what I call private data!
Dev Digest 105 - Security First
Last Friday's Dev Digest was mostly about security and game topics, so let's take a look what you didn't get in your inbox. We also covered some brand new online courses to get started as a developer or refresh your knowledge. And we wrapped up CODE1...
Dev Digest 105 - Security First
CH
Chris Heilmann
Dev Digest 110 - XY marks the spotty security
This time we give you a collection of links about the XZ backdoor, solve the last CODE100 puzzle, announce the next round of it, let you play with colours and explain why Lava lamps are great to keep the web secure.News and ArticlesThe big piece of n...
Dev Digest 110 - XY marks the spotty security

From learning to earning

Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.