44CON LONDON 2015

Rails has a strong foundation in convention over configuration. In this regard, Rails handles a lot of security related conventions for developers, keeping them safe from vulnerabilities such as SQL Injection, XSS, and CSRF out of the box. However, authentication and authorization logic is largely left up to the developer. It is here that the abilities of the framework hit the end of the track and it’s up to the developers to keep themselves safe. In this talk, we take a look at patterns that we’ve seen across some of the largest Rails applications on the internet and cover common pitfalls that you as a security researcher and/or developer can watch out for. We will also be discussing and releasing a new dynamic analysis tool for Rails applications to help pentesters navigate through authentication and authorization solutions in Rails.