The Minneapolis/Saint Paul OWASP chapter is organizing two events that I want to tell you about.

First, Jeremiah Grossman is speaking at the September 9 chapter meeting. This will be a reprise of his talk at Black Hat, “Get Rich or Die Trying”:

Forget Cross-Site Scripting. Forget SQL Injection. If you want to make some serious cash on the Web silently and surreptitiously, you don’t need them. You also don’t need noisy scanners, sophisticated proxies, 0-days, or ninja level reverse engineering skills — all you need is a Web browser, a clue on what to look for, and a few black hat tricks. Generating affiliate advertising revenue from the Website traffic of others, trade stock using corporation information passively gleaned, inhibit the online purchase of sought after items creating artificial scarcity, and so much more. Activities not technically illegal, only violating terms of service.

You may have heard these referred to as business logic flaws, but that name really doesn’t do them justice. It sounds so academic and benign in that context when the truth is anything but. These are not the same ol’ Web hacker attack techniques everyone is familiar with, but the one staring you in the face and missed because gaming a system and making money this way couldn’t be that simple. Plus IDS can’t detect them and Web application firewalls can’t black them. If fact, these types of attacks are so hard to detect (if anyone is actually trying) we aren’t even sure how widespread their use actually is. Time to pull back the cover and expose what’s possible.

Slides of the talk are posted on his blog. Grossman does good presentations. This promises to be excellent.

Second, on October 21, we’re planning a one-day conference at the Saint Paul campus of the University of Minnesota. Details are still being worked out, but speakers include Jeff Williams (CEO of Aspect Security and an OWASP founder), Brian Chess (Fortify Software), and Richard Stallman.

Yes, Richard Stallman. I didn’t expect that! Looking forward to it. (No, that link doesn’t explain who he is. It’s just damn funny.)

Registration for the October conference hasn’t opened yet, but from what I understand we’re going to be able to make it free of charge. Wow.

I’ll let you know when there’s more information.