Remediation Statistics: What Does Fixing Application Vulnerabilities Cost?
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The document presents a comprehensive overview of the costs and time associated with fixing application vulnerabilities, specifically focusing on remediation projects. It discusses best practices, methodologies, and analysis from statistical data gathered on various vulnerabilities, emphasizing the importance of project structure, stakeholder involvement, and effective execution. The findings highlight potential biases and suggest strategies for minimizing remediation costs, including better access to development environments and automation in testing.
Remediation Statistics: What Does Fixing Application Vulnerabilities Cost?
- 1. Remediation Statistics: What Does Fixing Application Vulnerabilities Cost? Dan Cornell Denim Group, Ltd. Session ID: ASEC-302 Session Classification: Intermediate
- 2. Agenda An Innocent Question Finding a Structure for Remediation Projects Methodology Remediation Data Analysis and Recommendations Questions 2
- 3. Fixing a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Vulnerability How long does it take? A) 9.6 minutes B) 16.2 minutes C) 84 minutes D) It doesn’t matter E) All of the above 3
- 4. Fixing a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Vulnerability How long does it take? A) 9.6 minutes – Average fix time for stored XSS (no load) B) 16.2 minutes – Average fix time for reflected XSS (no load) C) 84 minutes – Average fix time for stored and reflected (loaded) D) It doesn’t matter E) All of the above 4
- 5. Fixing a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Vulnerability How long does it take? A) 9.6 minutes – Average fix time for stored XSS (no load) B) 16.2 minutes – Average fix time for reflected XSS (no load) C) 84 minutes – Average fix time for stored and reflected (loaded) D) It doesn’t matter E) All of the above 5
- 6. Remediation Worst Practices When the security team: Demands a development team devote time and budget to remediation Provides them with no direction or support Has the development team attempt to make fixes on their own Complains when things don’t work out 6
- 7. Remediation Worst Practices Result: No new features and half- or non-fixed vulnerabilities Good luck getting your next remediation project approved 7
- 8. Finding a Structure for Remediation Projects Desired outcome: predictable and effective remediation projects Predictable: know how long they will take and how much they will cost Effective: targeted vulnerabilities actually get fixed A community of stakeholders Security Development IT Audit / Compliance 8
- 9. Remediation Projects Inception Planning Calculate Risk Agree on Fix and Confirmation Methods Determine Level of Effort Schedule Execution Set up Development Environment Fix Vulnerabilities Confirm Fixes and Perform Functional Testing Deploy 9
- 10. Remediation: How To Guide Describes methodology for software security remediation projects Includes tips and best practices Free online denimgroup.com/howtoguide_download_register.html 10
- 11. That’s Great But… How long will it actually take me to fix my vulnerabilities? Software security remediation projects are software development projects So estimate them as such Best practices: Bottom-up estimation Cluster vulnerabilities where possible It would be nice to have some data to use as a starting point… 11
- 12. Data! Took data from 15 remediated applications Two types of analysis: Vulnerability-level (4 applications) Project-level (13 applications) Data from Inception and Planning phases was too messy Data from Execution phase was useable 12
- 13. The Good (Why This Data Might Be Useful) Some data is better than no data As long as you understand potential areas of bias Read “How to Measure Anything” by Douglas W. Hubbard Had relatively large sample size for some vulnerability types 13
- 14. The Bad (Some Potential Sources of Bias) Relatively small sample size Based on a single project type Outsourced software security remediation projects Data required cleanup and normalization Vulnerability data centered around technical vulnerabilities Most identified by automated static analysis 14
- 15. Vulnerability-Specific Data (20+ Sample Count) Vulnerability Type Sample Count Average Fix (minutes) Dead Code (unused methods) 465 2.6 Poor logging: system output stream 83 2.9 Poor Error Handling: Empty catch block 180 6.8 Lack of Authorization check 61 6.9 Unsafe threading 301 8.5 ASP.NET non-serializable object in session 42 9.3 XSS (stored) 1023 9.6 Null Dereference 157 10.2 Missing Null Check 46 15.7 XSS (reflected) 25 16.2 Redundant null check 21 17.1 SQL injection 30 97.5 15
- 16. Some Thoughts and Notes Apparently deleting code and changing logging methods are easy Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability count tracks with data from WhiteHat, Veracode, other sources Harder to fix reflected XSS than stored XSS Lack of Authorization Check Fix consisted of copy/pasting file include into a number of files SQL Injection Surprisingly high Reason: fixes were for more complicated SQL injection vulnerabilities 16
- 17. So If I Have 6 Stored XSS Vulnerabilities… … my remediation project should take about an hour, right? But wait! 17
- 18. Remediation Is Not Just About Coding Fixes This data is from one of four steps in one of three phases “Fix Vulnerabilities” step in the “Execution” phase What about Inception and Planning? No great data available yet What about the rest of Execution? Set up Development Environment Fix Vulnerabilities Confirm Fixes and Perform Functional Testing Deploy Overhead 18
- 19. Where Is Time Being Spent? 70% Indicates the weighted average versus the average of individual 60% 59% projects 50% 44% 42% 40% 37% 30% 31% 28% 29% 24% 24% 20% 17% 20% 15% 15% 16% 10% 9% 3% 2% 0% 0% 0% Setup Development Fix Vulnerabilities Confirm Fixes / QA 0% Deploy Overhead Environment 19
- 20. Some Thoughts and Notes Setup Development Environment Best case: existing development environment or VM Worst case: Safari expedition to recreate environment setup because organization no longer had this knowledge Instructions on setting up a development environment were a deliverable Fix Vulnerabilities This is what people focus on but there is wide variation 20
- 21. Some Thoughts and Notes (continued) Confirm Fixes / QA Sometimes this took more time than the actual fixes Best case: Existing set of automated functional / regression tests Deploy Best case: use an existing planned release Overhead Surprisingly high in some cases 21
- 22. Using the Data I thought you said to estimate bottom-up? Yes. Do that Use the vulnerability data as a guide for estimation Use the project composition data for validation Use the lessons of the data to try and minimize required investment 22
- 23. What Can I Do To Minimize Remediation Costs? Avoid introducing vulnerabilities into your software (you are all welcome for this piece of sage advice) 23
- 24. What Can I Do To Minimize Remediation Costs? Have ready access to development environments for the developers doing the remediation Automated functional / regression testing helps speed security fixes Use planned deployments when possible 24
- 25. Which Vulnerabilities Get Fixed and When? Use your data-backed, bottom-up WBS for risk management and planning Serious vulnerabilities that are easy to fix? Consider an out-of-cycle release Otherwise leverage planned releases 25
- 26. The Outlier We remediated one vulnerability not included in the study that was more expensive to fix than all vulnerabilities in the study Authentication issue in a connected system Requirements and architecture vulnerability Automated scanners – static or dynamic: powerless to find it Should have / would have been caught by even a basic threat modeling or abuse case session 26
- 27. So Where Does This Leave Us Good: We have a framework We have some data Less good: The data comes with a number of caveats Given a framework and some data you should be: Better able to execute successful projects Better able to estimate projects Better able to minimize project costs 27
- 28. Next Steps For Me Release a more in-depth report Include more data in the analysis Perform deeper analysis Impact of size of project (hours) Impact of number of vulnerabilities remediated Impact of platform And so on… Include data on logical vulnerabilities 28
- 29. Apply Review your existing vulnerability data Create a “back of the envelope” plan to address open vulnerabilities Run different scenarios: “All critical and high” “All public-facing apps” and so on Talk to developers How do they set up development environments? When do they do planned releases? Fix some vulnerabilities! Application-level vulnerabilities persist for a long time 29
- 30. Remediation Resource Center Resources for remediating software security vulnerabilities Videos How-to Guide Blog posts denimgroup.com/remediation 30