Application Security Testing: OWASP Top 10, SAST, DAST and SCA Training Course

A01:2025 – Broken Access Control

Access control mechanisms enforce policies to ensure users cannot act beyond their intended permissions. Failures in this area typically result in unauthorized disclosure, modification, or destruction of data, or the execution of business functions outside of user limits.

Practical Aspects

• Real-world examples of broken access controls

• Best practices for implementing secure access controls

A02:2025 – Security Misconfiguration

Security misconfiguration occurs when systems, applications, or cloud services are incorrectly set up from a security perspective, thereby introducing vulnerabilities.

Practical Aspects

• Case studies illustrating common misconfigurations

• Strategies to prevent misconfiguration, including the use of configuration management and automation tools

A03:2025 – Software Supply Chain Failures

Software supply chain failures refer to breakdowns or compromises in the processes of building, distributing, or updating software. These incidents are often driven by vulnerabilities or malicious alterations in third-party code, tools, or other dependencies upon which the system relies.

A04:2025 – Cryptographic Failures

In general, all data in transit should be encrypted at the transport layer (OSI layer 4). Previous challenges, such as CPU performance constraints and private key/certificate management, have been mitigated by modern CPUs featuring instructions for accelerated encryption (e.g., AES support) and the simplification of key and certificate management through services like LetsEncrypt.org, alongside cloud vendors offering highly integrated certificate management solutions.

Beyond securing the transport layer, it is essential to identify which data requires encryption at rest and which necessitates additional encryption in transit (at the application layer, OSI layer 7).

For instance, sensitive data such as passwords, credit card numbers, health records, personal information, and business secrets demand extra protection, particularly when subject to privacy laws like the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or regulations such as the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

Practical Aspects

• In-depth analysis of cryptographic failures, including weak encryption algorithms and improper key management

• The significance of robust cryptographic mechanisms, secure protocols (SSL/TLS), and modern cryptography examples in web security

A05:2025 – Injection

An injection vulnerability is a system flaw that permits an attacker to insert malicious code or commands (such as SQL or shell code) into input fields, tricking the system into executing them as if they were legitimate system components. This can have severe consequences.

Practical Aspects

• Detailed examination of SQL, NoSQL, OS, and LDAP injection

• Mitigation techniques utilizing prepared statements, parameterized queries, and input escaping

A06:2025 – Insecure Design

Insecure design is a broad category representing various weaknesses characterized as “missing or ineffective control design.”

Insecure design is not the root cause of all other Top Ten risk categories. It is crucial to distinguish between insecure design and insecure implementation. They are differentiated because they have different root causes, occur at different stages of the development process, and require distinct remediation approaches.

Even a secure design can suffer from implementation defects that lead to exploitable vulnerabilities. Conversely, an insecure design cannot be resolved by perfect implementation, as the necessary security controls to defend against specific attacks were never established.

A key factor contributing to insecure design is the absence of business risk profiling inherent in the software or system being developed, leading to an inability to determine the required level of security design.

Practical Aspects

• Exploration of design flaws that lead to vulnerabilities, such as improper input validation

• Study of strategies for secure architecture and secure design principles

A07:2025 – Authentication Failures

This vulnerability arises when an attacker succeeds in tricking a system into recognizing an invalid or incorrect user as legitimate.

Practical Aspects

• Common authentication issues

• Secure authentication strategies, including multi-factor authentication and proper session handling

A08:2025 – Software or Data Integrity Failures

Software and data integrity failures involve code and infrastructure that fail to protect against invalid or untrusted code or data being treated as trusted and valid.

An example is when an application relies on plugins, libraries, or modules from untrusted sources, repositories, or content delivery networks (CDNs).

An insecure CI/CD pipeline that lacks software integrity checks for both consumption and provision can introduce risks of unauthorized access, insecure or malicious code, or system compromise.

Another example is a CI/CD pipeline that retrieves code or artifacts from untrusted locations and/or fails to verify them before use (e.g., by checking signatures or similar mechanisms).

Practical Aspects

• Focus on issues such as untrusted software updates and data tampering

• Safe update mechanisms and data integrity checks

A09:2025 – Security Logging and Alerting Failures

Without adequate logging and monitoring, attacks and breaches remain undetected, and without alerting, it is difficult to respond quickly and effectively during security incidents.

Insufficient logging, continuous monitoring, detection, and alerting mechanisms hinder the initiation of active responses at any time.

Practical Aspects

• The importance of logging security-relevant information and monitoring for suspicious activities

• Tools and practices for proper logging and real-time monitoring to detect breaches early

A10:2025 – Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions

Mishandling exceptional conditions in software occurs when programs fail to prevent, detect, and respond to unusual and unpredictable situations, leading to crashes, unexpected behavior, and potential vulnerabilities.

This can involve one or more of the following failures:

• The application does not prevent an unusual situation from occurring

• It does not identify the situation as it is happening

• It responds poorly or not at all to the situation afterwards

SAST – Static Application Security Testing

1. Understanding static analysis and its optimal timing within the SDLC (shift left)

2. Types of vulnerabilities detectable through SAST, comparing vulnerable code vs. secure code

3. Overview of SAST tools (e.g., Semgrep, SonarQube, Checkmarx, depending on the client stack)

4. Practical exercise: run a SAST scan on a repository with deliberately introduced vulnerabilities, interpret results, and triage false positives vs. real vulnerabilities

DAST – Dynamic Application Security Testing

1. Differences between SAST and DAST, focusing on black box testing of the running application

2. The DAST scan workflow, including crawling, fuzzing, and response analysis

3. Overview of DAST tools (e.g., OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite)

4. Practical exercise: run a DAST scan on a vulnerable test application (e.g., OWASP Juice Shop), and identify and validate the findings

SCA – Software Composition Analysis

1. Risks associated with third-party dependencies and libraries, including inherited vulnerabilities

2. SBOM (Software Bill of Materials): definition and significance

3. Overview of SCA tools (e.g., Dependency Check, Snyk, GitHub Dependabot)

4. Practical exercise: run an SCA scan on a real project, identify vulnerable dependencies, and build a remediation plan (update, patch, mitigate)