Some possible final exam questions

1. Some possible final exam questions

2. DISCLAIMER • 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.

3. 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?

4. 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?

5. 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?

6. 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?

7. 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?

8. 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?

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

10. 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?

11. 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?

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

13. 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?

14. 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?

15. 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.