Free Ruby Security Workshop

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you an important announcement: On Thursday, June 6th, just in time for SummerCon, we will be hosting a free Ruby Security Workshop in NYC! Signups are first-come, first-serve and we only have space for 30 people. Sign up here and we will email the selected participants the location of the training on Tuesday night.

In the last year, many new vulnerabilities and vulnerability classes have been discovered in Ruby applications. These vulnerabilities make use of features specific to the Ruby language and common idioms present in large Ruby projects, such as serialization and deserialization of data in the YAML format. As these vulnerability classes were initially discovered in popular and well-studied open source software, it’s extremely likely that they occur in applications throughout the Ruby ecosystem. These applications frequently represent lucrative targets for attackers, and with the appearance of new and easily exploitable bug classes, the potential for targeted and mass exploitation of Ruby programs has been demonstrated to the world. In this workshop, we aim to bridge a knowledge and skills gap by bringing information about these new vulnerability classes to software developers.

Our Ruby Security Workshop will be led by Hal Brodigan (@postmodern_mod3) and covers recent Ruby on Rails vulnerabilities classes, their root causes, and exercises where students develop exploits for real-world vulnerabilities. Attendees will learn the patterns behind the vulnerabilities and develop software engineering strategies to avoid introducing these flaws into their projects.

If you’re in the city for SummerCon and interested in attending on Thursday, fill out our signup form and selected participants will be sent more info tomorrow. We’re excited to bring you programs like this and we hope to see you there!