The CERT® Oracle® Secure Coding Standard for Java

This is the first authoritative, comprehensive compilation of code-level requirements for building secure systems in Java. Organized by CERT's pioneering software security experts, with support from Oracle's own Java platform developers, it covers every facet of secure software coding with Java 7 SE and Java 6 SE, and offers value even to developers working with other Java versions. The authors itemize the most common coding errors leading to vulnerabilities in Java programs, and provide specific guidelines for avoiding each of them. They show how to produce programs that are not only secure, but also safer, more reliable, more robust, and easier to maintain. After a high-level introduction to Java application security, eighteen consistently-organized chapters detail specific guidelines for each facet of Java development. Each set of guidelines defines conformance, presents both non-compliant examples and corresponding compliant solutions, shows how to assess risk, and offers references for further information. To limit this book's size, the authors focus on "normative requirements": strict rules for what programmers must do for their work to be secure, as defined by conformance to specific standards that can be tested through automated analysis software. (Note: A follow-up book will present "non-normative requirements": recommendations for what Java developers typically "should" do to further strengthen program security beyond testable "requirements.")

Ve>Fred Long is a senior lecturer and director of learning and teaching in the Department of Computer Science, Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom. He lectures on formal methods; Java, C++, and C programming paradigms and programming-related security issues. He is chairman of the British Computer Society’s Mid-Wales Sub-Branch. Fred has been a Visiting Scientist at the Software Engineering Institute since 1992. Recently, his research has involved the investigation of vulnerabilities in Java.

Dhruv Mohindra is a senior software engineer at Persistent Systems Limited, India, where he develops monitoring software for widely used enterprise servers. He has worked for CERT at the Software Engineering Institute and continues to collaborate to improve the state of security awareness in the programming community.

Dhruv has also worked for Carnegie Mellon University, where he obtained his master of science degree in information security policy and management. He holds an undergraduate degree in computer engineering from Pune University, India, where he researched with Calsoft, Inc., during his academic pursuit.

A writing enthusiast, Dhruv occasionally contributes articles to technology magazines and online resources. He brings forth his experience and learning from developing and securing service oriented applications, server monitoring software, mobile device applications, web-based data miners, and designing user-friendly security interfaces.

Robert C. Seacord is a computer security specialist and writer. He is the author of books on computer security, legacy system modernization, and component-based software engineering.

Robert manages the Secure Coding Initiative at CERT, located in Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. CERT, among other security-related activities, regularly analyzes software vulnerability reports and assesses the risk to the Internet and other critical infrastructure. Robert is an adjunct professor in the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science and in the Information Networking Institute.

Robert started programming professionally for IBM in 1982, working in communications and operating system software, processor development, and software engineering. Robert also has worked at the X Consortium, where he developed and maintained code for the Common Desktop Environment and the X Window System. Robert has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Dean F. Sutherland is a senior software security engineer at CERT. Dean received his Ph.D. in software engineering from Carnegie Mellon in 2008. Before his return to academia, he spent 14 years working as a professional software engineer at Tartan, Inc. He spent the last six of those years as a senior member of the technical staff and a technical lead for compiler backend technology. He was the primary active member of the corporate R&D group, was a key instigator of the design and deployment of a new software development process for Tartan, led R&D projects, and provided both technical and project leadership for the 12-person compiler back-end group.

David Svoboda is a software security engineer at CERT. David has been the primary developer on a diverse set of software development projects at Carnegie Mellon since 1991, ranging from hierarchical chip modeling and social organization simulation to automated machine translation (AMT). His KANTOO AMT software, developed in 1996, is still in production use at Caterpillar. He has over 13 years of Java development experience, starting with Java 2, and his Java projects include Tomcat servlets and Eclipse plug-ins. David is also actively involved in several ISO standards groups: the JTC1/SC22/WG14 group for the C programming language and the JTC1/ SC22/WG21 group for C++.