Secure code generation for web applications

  • Authors:
  • Martin Johns;Christian Beyerlein;Rosemaria Giesecke;Joachim Posegga

  • Affiliations:
  • SAP Research – CEC Karlsruhe;Department of Informatics, SVS, University of Hamburg;SAP Research – CEC Karlsruhe;Faculty for Informatics and Mathematics, ISL, University of Passau

  • Venue:
  • ESSoS'10 Proceedings of the Second international conference on Engineering Secure Software and Systems
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

A large percentage of recent security problems, such as Cross-site Scripting or SQL injection, is caused by string-based code injection vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities exist because of implicit code creation through string serialization. Based on an analysis of the vulnerability class' underlying mechanisms, we propose a general approach to outfit modern programming languages with mandatory means for explicit and secure code generation which provide strict separation between data and code. Using an exemplified implementation for the languages Java and HTML/JavaScript respectively, we show how our approach can be realized and enforced.