Some possible final exam questions

DISCLAIMER models only These questions are models only. Some of these questions may or may not appear in the final. Questions in the final may or may not be in this presentation. This presentation is strictly intended as a model guide, not a study guide.

Some questions for chapter 1 Why is static analysis necessary? What is the difference between security features and secure features? Why is testing not enough to determine whether a program is secure? What is a secure program? What are the seven pernicious kingdoms and their importance?

Questions for chapter 2 Is it possible to produce a perfect static analysis tool? Why or why not? What are false positives? False negatives? What is their effect on a static analysis tool? What is the difference between a static analysis tool and a bug finder?

Questions for Chapter 3 Is the “number of possible vulnerabilities per line of code” a useful metric? Somebody believes that doing a security analysis is a waste of time. What arguments would you use to convince that person that it is not?

Questions for chapter 4 How can data-flow analysis impact static analysis? What is the importance of parsing in static analysis? What is local analysis? Global analysis? How do they interact? What is taint analysis? Why is it important?

Questions for Chapter 5 What data should be validated? Why is blacklisting not a good idea? How would you validate an input which is supposed to be a person's full name? How about a filename? Does it make a difference where the file is required to reside? How should data be input? Which functions can be used and which should not be used? What should be done with bad data? What should be done if your input is too long?

Questions for chapter 6 Why are buffer overflows dangerous? How can we avoid buffer overflows? How can we detect buffer overflows? What is meant by null-termination? What headaches can be caused by wide and extra-wide character sets?

Questions for chapter 7 How can integer overflows lead to vulnerabilities? What problems are there with integer arithmetic that can cause vulnerabilities?

Questions on Chapter 8 What kinds of error handling can a programmer use? How can an exception vanish? What problems can be introduced with error handling? What are some good practices for error logging? What are Easter Eggs? Are there exceptions that should not happen? What is the proble with error handling and resource leaks? How can it be avoided?

Questions on Chapter 9 What is wrong with get vs post? What is XSS and why is it bad? How can it be stopped? What other problem are there with web sites? What is phishing? What is an open redirect? What is a session identifier and how is it used?

Questions for Chapter 10 What is XML? What is its use? Should XML input be validated? If yes, how? If no, why?

Questions for Chapter 11 What kinds of data should be kept confidential? How can secrets be protected? How can private data be protected in transit? What software needs to be used? Why is random() not a good function to use in security? What are your chances of finding useful information that a program left behind a week earlier in a Windows machine? What about a Linux machine? How would you store a password for use in an application?

Questions on Chapter 12 Does the admin user on MACs have absolute privileges? Why or why not? What is the difference between the effective UID and the real UID? How can chroot() be used? Why is it dangerous? What are race conditions? What is a safe directory?

Questions on Secure Design Principles How many Design principles are not being fulfilled in Windows? Which are they? How would you change windows so the principles are fulfilled? What is a covert channel? Pretty much any question on any principle is fair game.