Chapter 6. Security – Writing Secure Code

Security of software applications (or lack of it) has been attracting a lot of importance in the past few years in the industry and the media. It seems that every other day, we hear about an instance or two of malicious hackers causing massive data breaches in software systems in different parts of the world, and causing millions of dollars worth of losses. The victims are either government departments, financial institutions, firms handling sensitive customer data such as passwords, credit cards, and so on.

Software security and secure coding has assumed more importance than ever due to the unprecedented amounts of data being shared across software and hardware systems—the explosion of smart personal technologies such as smart phones, smart watches, smart music players, and other smart systems has aided this immense traffic of data across the Internet in a big way. With the advent of IPv6 and expected large scale adoption...