Paul raised the question: "Is internet security getting better or worse?"

By 2004 we had bought lots of security products, and now only port 80 is the only open port (default DENY). Hackers started hacking web apps instead.

Classic ASP was easy to hack. until in 2005 when vendors started releasing safer technology frameworks (2005? We were using it in 2002)

Note: ASP.NET doesn't have XSS protection built in, unless you leave ValidateRequest on (which no-one does), as controls only sporadically escape their output.

Paul looked at Security-Assessment's old pen-test projects and compared their vulnerabilities to those run recently.

"In 2003-2005, web application developers were F$%^&* bad"

"Developers fail at anything to do with files"

But the situations hasn't got much better lately. Admin sections are still accessible, SQL injection still found, but less common, file uploads allowing directory traversal.

When developers use framework security controls, they're okay. If they use custom security code, they mess it up.

"Less vulnerabilities in 2009 resulted in a shell"

"Security only works flawlessly when it's already implemented in the framework" - when developers build their own code, they normally mess it up.

Summary: The internet is getting more secure, but we're not there yet! Only need one bug to get in to a system.