2025-06-13 –, Backup
People talk a lot about defensive software architecture, but does it really make a difference?
In this presentation, I give an example from a security audit we performed, in which a simple misuse of a cryptographic primitive led to the compromise of an entire customer service tool for a payment provider, which would have allowed us full administrative access to their backends.
By stepping through the architecture of the system from the highest level down to the exact vulnerable code, this example allows us to illustrate the advantages of defensive software architectures with multiple layers of security. By the end of the presentation, you will have a new appreciation for defensive software architectures. As a bonus, you will also have learned about a neat cryptographic trick that exploits unauthenticated encryption.
Max Maaß works at the security team at iteratec. He spends his time with architecture reviews, threat modeling and pentesting for software development projects, and has contributed to the OWASP secureCodeBox. Previously, he conducted research into security and privacy issues at the Secure Mobile Networking Lab at TU Darmstadt.