STMS_QA Approval or rejection of requests
Our toolbox ...
Basis administrators often have basic ABAP knowledge, for example, and ABAP developers know the basics of SAP Basis. Nevertheless, the two fields of activity are usually organizationally separated in the company.
An important area of SAP Security is the analysis of the customer's own SAP programs, which are classically written in the proprietary SAP language ABAP. Here, too, as in all programming languages, security vulnerabilities can be programmed - whether consciously or unconsciously. However, the patterns of security vulnerabilities in ABAP code differ from those in Java stacks or Windows programs. The goal of these conventional programs is usually to either crash the program (buffer overflow) or to artificially execute the program's own code (code injection). Both is not possible in ABAP, since a crash of a process causes nothing else than the creation of an entry in the log database (Dump ST22) and a subsequent termination of the report with return to the menu starting point. So a direct manipulation as in other high level languages or servers is not possible. However, there are other manipulation possibilities.
Technical and non-technical skills
For example, many customer ABAP programs work by uploading or downloading data. There are potentially large security gaps here that allow access to server data. In addition, the widespread direct invocation of operating system commands that are not covered by a self-programmed authorization check is a major problem. Even though classic SQL injection, i.e., the entry of extended SQL commands, is a potential security vulnerability, it occurs rather rarely in SAP systems. More widespread is the unintentional dynamization of SQL calls because input parameters are not sufficiently checked. The need to check all in-house developments internally for such security vulnerabilities before they are delivered in SAP's own code has led to the development of the SAP Code Vulnerability Analyzer tool.
In addition to scanning and identifying the respective security vulnerabilities of a program, it is also possible to stop tasks that are to be transported to other SAP systems with security vulnerabilities in the further transport process This applies, for example, to the CHARM process based on SAP Solution Manager. This forces a programmer to securely check the programs he or she is responsible for according to the same security criteria. If a program then still has security problems, it can either be released via the dual control principle or returned for further processing. Do you know of any other solutions for improving ABAP code security or have you already gained experience with the products mentioned above? I look forward to your comments!
Some missing SAP basic functions in the standard are supplied by the PC application "Shortcut for SAP Systems".
Sometimes the testers were not familiar with the test environment or no one thought about taking care of a sufficient and current test data set (master data, movement data).
SAP Basis refers to the administration of SAP system that includes activities like installation and configuration, load balancing, and performance of SAP applications running on Java stack and SAP ABAP. This includes the maintenance of different services related to database, operating system, application and web servers in SAP system landscape and stopping and starting the system. Here you can find some useful information about SAP Basis: www.sap-corner.de.
At the moment when foreign programmes are running on your system without any control, you can expect that great damage will be done.