The Art of Software Security Assessment

Computer Software is an integral part of modern society. Companies rely on applications to manage client information, payment data, and inventory tracking. Consumers use software for a variety of different reasons as well--to manage their daily lives, to communicate with friends and family, and to browse resources made available on the internet, to name a few. With such a heavy reliance on software in our society, questions surrounding the security of the pieces of software performing these various tasks begin to arise. Is the software we are using really secure? How can we verify that it is? And what are the implications of a particular application being compromised? These are some of the questions that this book attempts to address. This book sheds light on the theory and practice of code auditing--how to rip apart an application and discover security vulnerabilities, whether they be simple or subtle, and how to assess the danger that each vulnerability represents.