Principles to keep in mind if you want your applications to be secure:
- Never trust user input!
- Validate input from all untrusted sources - use whitelists not blacklists
- Plan for security from the start - it's not something you can bolt on at the end
- Keep it simple - complexity increases the likelihood of security holes
- Keep your attack surface to a minimum
- Make sure you fail securely
- Use defence in depth
- Adhere to the principle of least privilege
- Use threat modelling
- Compartmentalize - so your system is not all or nothing
- Hiding secrets is hard - and secrets hidden in code won't stay secret for long
- Don't write your own crypto
- Using crypto doesn't mean you're secure (attackers will look for a weaker link)
- Be aware of buffer overflows and how to protect against them
There are some excellent books and articles online about making your applications secure:
- Writing Secure Code 2nd Edition - I think every programmer should read this
- Building Secure Software: How to Avoid Security Problems the Right Way
- Secure Programming Cookbook
- Exploiting Software
- Security Engineering - an excellent read
- Secure Programming for Linux and Unix HOWTO
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