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Aspect-Oriented Programming and Security
Rohit Sethi

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a paradigm that is quickly gaining traction in the development world. At least partially spurred by the popularity of the Java Spring framework [1], people are beginning to understand the substantial benefits that AOP brings to development. While several others have tied AOP to security [2][3], I aspire to raise awareness amongst my information security colleagues that AOP can have a substantially beneficial impact on application security. I'm convinced that, if more of us understand it, we'll be in a better place to work with developers to create secure applications and perhaps, more importantly add security into existing insecure applications.

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Aspect-Oriented Programming and Security 2007-10-22
marcschoenefeld (1 replies)
Re: Aspect-Oriented Programming and Security 2007-10-24
rksethi
It is true that many of the benefits of AOP can be built into a new design with simple OOP concepts. I've seen organizations implement their own "Interceptable" OO-style interface, and it can get quite bulky and hard to manage. Moreover, changing joinpoints is difficult and often ends up complicating rather than simplifying application design. It is also true that other technologies can be used for the "catch and filter" pattern employed by AOP, but most of these have limitations. Servlet filters, for instance, work well on the presentation tier but do not address shortcomings in middle tier logic.

Moreover, I don't think we're necessarily missing techniques on how to build NEW applications securely. The biggest security benefit of AOP that I can see is that it can be used to plug holes in existing applications, and the reality is that most developers are not working with net new applications.

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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/infocus/1895/997#997
Security and VPN's 2007-11-26
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