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Jani Hartikainen:
Library author: Don't provide an exploitable interface
Sep 02, 2013 @ 16:18:05

Jani Hartikainen has shared a recommendations to library authors out there - don't make your library exploitable. That is, don't make it, by default, open to common attacks like SQL injection or cross-site scripting.

SQL injection is a pretty big deal. Its cousin shell injection is also a common issue, demonstrated quite well by a recent post to the PHP reddit. Although some suspect it was a troll, I heard echos from a variety of people who had seen pretty much exactly the same vulnerability in production.

This got me thinking: People writing libraries for doing things like shell commands, SQL, etc., don’t actually have to provide an interface that can be easily mis-used. An interface like this could just as easily be based on some other data type besides a plain string, completely side stepping issues caused by concatenation. “What on earth are you talking about?” – Let me explain...

He goes on to talk about more specifically about SQL injection issues (it is still first on the OWASP list after all) and makes a few suggestions to a better API. He points out a lot of it is about little or no education on security-related topics. He also suggests a "SafeSQL" kind of interface that would help prevent some of these common issues using something like Haskell.

tagged: sqlinjection sqli exploit library haskell

Link: http://codeutopia.net/blog/2013/08/31/library-author-dont-provide-an-exploitable-interface/


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