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Cloud application security in Python for AWS

CYDPyCldAWS5d
5 days
On-site or online
Hands-on
Python
Banking and finance
Developer
Instructor-led
Pricing Inquiry Download PDF
labs

38 Labs

case_study

19 Case Studies

Platform

Cloud, Web

Audience

Python developers working on Web applications and AWS

Preparedness

General Python and Web development

Standards and references

OWASP, CWE and Fortify Taxonomy

Group size

12 participants

Outline

  • Cyber security basics
  • The OWASP Top Ten 2025
  • Cloud security
  • Input validation
  • Wrap up

What you will learn

  • Understand cloud security specialties
  • Getting familiar with essential cyber security concepts
  • Managing vulnerabilities in third party components
  • Understanding Web application security issues
  • Detailed analysis of the OWASP Top Ten elements
  • Putting Web application security in the context of Python
  • Going beyond the low hanging fruits
  • Understanding how cryptography supports security
  • Learning how to use cryptographic APIs correctly in Python
  • Getting familiar with security testing techniques and tools
  • Learn to deal with cloud infrastructure security
  • Input validation approaches and principles
  • Identify vulnerabilities and their consequences
  • Learn the security best practices in Python

Description

Your cloud application written in Python works as intended, so you are done, right? But did you consider feeding in incorrect values? 16Gbs of data? A null? An apostrophe? Negative numbers, or specifically -1 or -2^31? Because that’s what the bad guys will do – and the list is far from complete.

The cloud has become a critical aspect of online services. No matter which model you’re using (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS), part of your service is now operated by someone else. This may look like a net positive, but it also greatly expands the attack surface and brings in several new risks that may not be obvious. Have you configured all security settings correctly? Are you prepared for supply chain attacks? How can you protect the confidentiality of user data in the cloud? And most importantly: can the bad guys use your exposure to their advantage?

Handling security needs a healthy level of paranoia, and this is what this course provides: a strong emotional engagement by lots of hands-on labs and stories from real life, all to substantially improve code hygiene. Mistakes, consequences, and best practices are our blood, sweat and tears.

The curriculum goes through the common Web application security issues following the OWASP Top Ten but goes far beyond it both in coverage and the details.All this is put in the context of Python, and extended by core programming issues, discussing security pitfalls of the programming language and the AWS cloud platform.

So that you are prepared for the forces of the dark side.

So that nothing unexpected happens.

Nothing.

Table of contents

  • Cyber security basics
    • What is security?
    • Threat and risk
    • Cyber security threat types – the CIA triad
    • Consequences of insecure software
    • Cloud security basics
      • Cloud infrastructure basics
      • The Cloud Cube Model and Zero Trust Architecture
      • Case study – ChaosDB vulnerability in Azure Cosmos DB
  • The OWASP Top Ten 2025
    • A01 – Broken Access Control
      • Access control basics
      • Confused deputy
        • Insecure direct object reference (IDOR)
        • Path traversal
        • Lab – Insecure Direct Object Reference
        • Path traversal best practices
        • Authorization bypass through user-controlled keys
        • Case study – Remote takeover of Nexx garage doors and alarms
        • Lab – Horizontal authorization
      • File upload
        • Unrestricted file upload
        • Good practices
        • Lab – Unrestricted file upload
      • Open redirects and forwards
        • Open redirects and forwards – best practices
      • Server-side Request Forgery (SSRF)
        • Case study – SSRF in Ivanti Connect Secure
    • A02 – Security Misconfiguration
      • Secrets management
        • Hard coded passwords
        • Best practices
        • Lab – Hardcoded password
      • XML entities
        • DTD and the entities
        • Entity expansion
        • External Entity Attack (XXE)
          • File inclusion with external entities
          • Server-Side Request Forgery with external entities
          • Lab – External entity attack
          • Preventing XXE
          • Lab – Prohibiting DTD
          • Case study – XXE vulnerability in Ivanti products
    • A03 – Software Supply Chain Failures
      • Using vulnerable components
      • Untrusted functionality import
      • Malicious packages in Python
      • Supply chain security and the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)
      • SBOM examples
      • Case study – The Polyfill.io supply chain attack
      • Vulnerability management
  • The OWASP Top Ten 2025
    • A04 – Cryptographic Failures (continued)
      • Cryptography for developers (continued)
        • Confidentiality protection (continued)
          • Confidentiality protection
          • Symmetric encryption
            • Block ciphers
            • Modes of operation
            • Modes of operation and IV – best practices
            • Symmetric encryption in Python
            • Lab – Symmetric encryption in Python
          • Asymmetric encryption
          • Combining symmetric and asymmetric algorithms
          • Key exchange and agreement
            • Key exchange
            • Diffie-Hellman key agreement algorithm
            • Key exchange pitfalls and best practices
        • Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)
          • Key management challenges
          • Certificates
            • Certificates and PKI
            • Chain of trust
            • X.509 certificates
            • PKI actors and procedures
            • PGP – Web of Trust
            • Certificate revocation
        • Transport security
          • The TLS protocol
            • TLS basics
            • TLS features (changes in v1.3)
            • The handshake in a nutshell (v1.3)
            • An example TLS 1.3 handshake
            • TLS best practices
            • HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)
    • A05 – Injection
      • Injection principles
      • Injection attacks
      • SQL injection
        • SQL injection basics
        • Lab – SQL injection
        • Attack techniques
        • Content-based blind SQL injection
        • Time-based blind SQL injection
        • SQL injection best practices
          • Input validation
          • Parameterized queries
          • Lab – Using prepared statements
          • Database defense in depth
          • Case study – SQL injection against US airport security
          • SQL injection protection and ORM
        • NoSQL injection
          • NoSQL injection basics
          • NoSQL injection in MongoDB
          • NoSQL injection in DynamoDB
      • Parameter manipulation
        • Newline injection
      • Code injection
        • Code injection via input()
        • OS command injection
          • Lab – Command injection
          • OS command injection best practices
          • Avoiding command injection with the right APIs
          • Lab – Command injection best practices
          • Case study – Shellshock
          • Lab – Shellshock
          • Case study – Command injection in Ivanti security appliances
  • The OWASP Top Ten 2025
    • A05 – Injection (continued)
      • HTML injection – Cross-site scripting (XSS)
        • Cross-site scripting basics
        • Cross-site scripting types
          • Persistent cross-site scripting
          • Reflected cross-site scripting
          • Client-side (DOM-based) cross-site scripting
        • Lab – Stored XSS
        • Lab – Reflected XSS
        • Case study – XSS to RCE in Teltonika routers
        • XSS protection best practices
          • Protection principles – escaping
          • XSS protection APIs in Python
          • XSS protection in Jinja2
          • Lab – XSS fix / stored
          • Lab – XSS fix / reflected
          • Client-side protection principles
          • Additional protection layers – defense in depth
          • Case study – XSS vulnerabilities in DrayTek Vigor routers
    • A06 – Insecure Design
      • The STRIDE model of threats
      • Secure design principles of Saltzer and Schroeder
        • Economy of mechanism
        • Fail-safe defaults
        • Complete mediation
        • Open design
        • Separation of privilege
        • Least privilege
        • Least common mechanism
        • Psychological acceptability
      • Client-side security
        • Same Origin Policy
          • Simple request
          • Lab – Same-origin policy demo
        • Frame sandboxing
          • Cross-Frame Scripting (XFS) attacks
          • Lab – Clickjacking
          • Clickjacking beyond hijacking a click
          • Clickjacking protection best practices
          • Lab – Using CSP to prevent clickjacking
    • A07 – Authentication Failures
      • Authentication
        • Authentication basics
        • Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
        • Case study – The InfinityGauntlet attack
        • Time-based One Time Passwords (TOTP)
      • Session handling
        • Session management essentials
        • Why do we protect session IDs – Session hijacking
        • Session fixation
        • Session ID best practices
        • Session handling in Flask
      • Token-based authentication and authorization
        • Advantages and challenges
        • Token protection best practices
        • JSON Web Tokens (JWT)
        • Integrity protection of JWT
      • Cookie security
        • Cookie attributes
      • Single sign-on (SSO)
        • Single sign-on concept
        • OAuth 2.0
          • OAuth 2.0 basics
          • OAuth 2.0 prerequisites
          • OAuth 2.0 flow for Authorization Code Grant – Step #1
          • OAuth 2.0 flow for Authorization Code Grant – Step #2
          • OAuth 2.0 flow for Authorization Code Grant – Step #3
          • OAuth 2.0 flow for Authorization Code Grant – Step #4
          • OAuth 2.0 flow for Authorization Code Grant – Step #5
          • OAuth 2.0 flow for Authorization Code Grant – Step #6
          • OAuth 2.0 flow for Authorization Code Grant – Step #7
          • Best practices
        • SAML
          • SAML basics
          • SAML profiles
          • SAML security
      • Identity and access management (IAM)
        • Identity and access management in AWS
        • Groups, roles and credentials
        • Access tokens
        • Lab – STS in AWS
  • The OWASP Top Ten 2025
    • A07 – Authentication Failures (continued)
    • A08 – Software and Data Integrity Failures
      • Integrity protection
        • Message Authentication Code (MAC)
        • Digital signature
          • Elliptic Curve Cryptography
            • ECC basics
            • Digital signature with ECC
      • Subresource integrity
        • Importing JavaScript
        • Lab – Importing JavaScript
        • Case study – The British Airways data breach
      • Insecure deserialization
        • Serialization and deserialization challenges
        • Integrity – deserializing untrusted streams
        • Deserialization with pickle
        • Lab – Deserializing with Pickle
        • Case study – The security of the machine learning supply chain
        • Case study – The first wave of supply chain attacks: RCE via pickle (2022)
        • Case study – Compromising the Hugging Face Hub repository
        • Integrity – deserialization best practices
  • Cloud security
    • AWS security
      • Security considerations
        • AWS and security
        • The AWS shared responsibility model
        • AWS cloud compliance
        • AWS hardening
        • Security tools for AWS
        • Container security concerns
        • Containerization, virtualization and security
        • The attack surface
    • Docker security
      • Docker and security
      • Docker security best practices
      • Lab – Static analysis of Docker images
      • Hardening Docker containers
    • Kubernetes security
      • The Kubernetes architecture and security
      • Securing Kubernetes hosts
      • Best practices for Kubernetes access control
      • Protecting Kubernetes deployments at runtime
      • Lab – Kubernetes security testing
      • Kubernetes security tools
      • Lab – Scanning a Kubernetes cluster for vulnerabilities
      • Case study – Azurescape
    • Infrastructure as Code
      • Infrastructure as Code security
      • AWS CloudFormation security
      • Typical mistakes in CloudFormation configuration files
      • Terraform security
      • Terraform threats and best practices
      • IaC security tools
        • IaC scanning tools
        • Lab – Terraform security scanning
        • Lab – CloudFormation security scanning
        • Secrets scanning
        • Lab – Finding secrets in Git repositories
        • Cloud infrastructure scanning
        • Lab – Using a cloud environment scanner
  • The OWASP Top Ten 2025
    • A10 – Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions
      • Error and exception handling principles
      • Error handling
        • Returning a misleading status code
        • Information exposure through error reporting
          • Information leakage via error pages
          • Lab – Flask information leakage
          • Case study – Information leakage via errors in Apache Superset
      • Exception handling
        • In the except block. And now what?
        • Empty except block
        • Lab – Exception handling mess
      • Control flow
        • Incorrect block delimitation
        • Dead code
        • Using if-then-else and switch defensively
    • Web application security beyond the Top Ten
      • X01 – Lack of Application Resilience
        • Denial of service
        • Flooding
        • Resource exhaustion
        • Sustained client engagement
        • Infinite loop
        • Economic Denial of Sustainability (EDoS)
        • Algorithmic complexity issues
          • Regular expression denial of service (ReDoS)
            • Lab – ReDoS
            • Dealing with ReDoS
            • Case study – ReDoS vulnerabilities in Python
  • Cloud security
    • Data security in the cloud
      • Data security in AWS
      • Policies
      • Protecting data at rest
      • Storing cryptographic keys on AWS
      • Lab – Using the AWS Key Management Service
      • Protecting data in transit
      • JSON security
        • JSON validation
        • JSON injection
        • Best practices
        • Case study – ReactJS vulnerability in HackerOne
      • XML security
        • XML validation
        • XML injection
          • XPath injection
          • Blind XPath injection
      • Detection and monitoring
        • Utilizing AWS monitoring for security
        • Protecting logs
        • The AWS Security Hub
  • Input validation
    • Input validation principles
    • Denylists and allowlists
    • Case study – Denylist failure in urllib.parse.urlparse()
    • What to validate – the attack surface
    • Where to validate – defense in depth
    • When to validate – validation vs transformations
    • Output sanitization
    • Encoding challenges
    • Unicode challenges
    • Validation with regex
    • Integer handling problems
      • Representing signed numbers
      • Integer visualization
      • Integers in Python
      • Integer overflow
      • Integer overflows in ctypes and numpy
    • Format string issues
    • Unsafe native code
      • Native code dependence
      • Lab – Unsafe native code
      • Best practices for dealing with native code
  • Wrap up
    • Secure coding principles
      • Principles of robust programming by Matt Bishop
    • And now what?
      • Software security sources and further reading
      • Python resources

Pricing

5 days Session Price

3750 EUR / person

  • Live, instructor led classroom training
  • Discussion and insight into the hacker’s mindset
  • Hands-on practice using case studies based on high-profile hacks and live lab exercises
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