SpiderLabs Blog

Hack Your Own Code: Advanced training for Developers

Written by nosteve | Mar 28, 2012 12:46:00 PM

Mike Park and Marc Bown recently locked themselves in a conference room, working day and night on their upcoming training material. One of them just slipped this out from under the door, written on a long string of fast food napkins:

One of the best parts of a good con, apart from great talks (and drinking), is the chance to learn something new. Just about every conference offers training courses from a wide variety of sources, and most are pretty good. If you happened to be in Sydney Australia for OWASP AppSec Asia Pacific 2012 this April 11-14th, you could always take a course that's just "pretty good". Or you can take "Hack Your Own Code: Advanced training for Developers" and get something that is entirely different and better.

At SpiderLabs, we recognize that a key to making web applications more secure is to have the developers understand security. One of the best ways to do that is to think like an attacker while you are writing code. Unfortunately, most developers never get a chance to see and experience what happens when their code gets hacked. This course will change that. We will not only get developers to do what they like – write code - but we'll also then have them hack their own code and learn from that how to protect their data and to prevent vulnerabilities from being introduced.

This course will have a lot of hands-on and lab content, using realistic demonstrations of the OWASP Top 10, all while getting developers to build increasingly secure code as the course progresses. It will wrap up with a mini-hacking contest, allowing the developers to use their new-found hacking tricks to find the most exploits in a vulnerable application. The winner will get a new iPod nano! Developers will not only learn new coding techniques, but will also learn to use the same tools as the attackers to test and make their own code better and stronger.

The course will be taught by Mike Park, Managing Security Consultant with Trustwave SpiderLabs Application Security Services team. Mike has more than 12 years of development and security experience in a variety of languages. Joining Mike will be Marc Bown, Managing Security Consultant, from SpiderLabs APAC, who will lend his expertise and insight into the methods being used by criminals to compromise computer systems and to steal the valuable data.

Please head one to the OWASP AppSec Asia Pacific website to register for the conference and sign up for the training https://www.owasp.org/index.php/AppSecAsiaPac2012