Many SAP customers have outsourced the operation of their SAP systems in order to save cost. In doing so, they entrust their most critical data to a hosting provider, potentially sharing the same SAP server with a number of companies and organizations unknown to them. These companies and organizations virtually sit in the same boat, without knowing each other and without trusting each other. They all trust in the ability of their hosting provider to run their operating environment in a secure way, though. But how secure is hosted data in a SAP environment? This talk demonstrates various risks and attack vectors. It covers vulnerabilities and backdoors in the SAP standard (including several zero-days discovered by Virtual Forge) and how they could be used in order to access hosted SAP data. It also covers risks introduced by custom coding provided by any of the hosted parties. The talk also provides valuable advice for SAP customers that rely on hosting providers. And what the providers should do in order to run their installations safer.
Xu Jia is researching SAP security topics since 2006. His focus is on static code analysis for ABAP and he is the lead architect for a commercial SCA tool. Working in the CodeProfiler Research Labs at Virtual Forge, he also analyzes (ABAP) security defects in SAP standard software. Xu has received credit for more than 30 security advisories where he reported 0-days to SAP, including multiple new forms of attack that are specific to SAP software. He already presented some of his research at Troopers 2013 and 2014 in Heidelberg.
Andreas Wiegenstein has been working as a professional SAP security consultant since 2003. He performed numerous SAP security audits and received credit for more than 80 SAP security patches related to vulnerabilities he discovered in various SAP products. As CTO at Virtual Forge GmbH he leads Research & Innovation, a team focusing on SAP specific security research and new security solutions. Andreas has trained large companies and defense organizations on SAP security and has spoken at multiple SAP-specific conferences (like TechEd, DSAG, BIZEC and SAPience) as well as at general security conferences such as Troopers, Black Hat, HITB, IT Defense, DeepSec and RSA. He researched the ABAP Top 20 Risks published by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and is co-author of the first book on ABAP security (SAP Press 2009). He is also member of BIZEC.org, the Business Security Community.