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

A01:2025 – Broken Access Control

Access control mechanisms enforce policies that restrict users from acting beyond their intended permissions. When these controls fail, the consequences can be severe, including unauthorized disclosure, modification, or destruction of data, as well as the execution of business functions outside established user limits.

Practical Aspects

• Exploration of practical examples demonstrating broken access controls

• Discussion of secure access control implementation and industry best practices

A02:2025 – Security Misconfiguration

Security misconfiguration occurs when systems, applications, or cloud services are set up incorrectly from a security standpoint, inadvertently creating exploitable vulnerabilities.

Practical Aspects

• Review of real-world misconfiguration cases

• Strategies for preventing misconfigurations, including the use of configuration management and automation tools

A03:2025 – Software Supply Chain Failures

Supply chain failures involve breakdowns or compromises in the software building, distribution, or update processes. These often stem from vulnerabilities or malicious alterations in third-party code, tools, or other dependencies upon which the system relies.

A04:2025 – Cryptographic Failures

As a general rule, all data in transit should be encrypted at the transport layer (OSI layer 4). Previous obstacles, such as CPU performance limitations and the complexity of private key/certificate management, have been largely addressed by modern CPUs with hardware-accelerated encryption instructions (e.g., AES support) and streamlined certificate management services like LetsEncrypt.org, along with tightly integrated solutions from major cloud providers.

Beyond securing the transport layer, it is crucial to determine which data requires encryption at rest and which data demands additional encryption during transmission at the application layer (OSI layer 7).

For instance, sensitive data such as passwords, credit card numbers, health records, personal information, and business secrets require enhanced 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 importance of robust cryptographic mechanisms, secure protocols (SSL/TLS), and modern cryptography applications in web security

A05:2025 – Injection

An injection vulnerability is a flaw that allows 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 commands. This can lead to catastrophic outcomes.

Practical Aspects

• A detailed breakdown of SQL, NoSQL, OS, and LDAP injection techniques

• Mitigation strategies using 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." It is distinct from implementation flaws.

Insecure design is not the root cause of all other Top Ten risk categories. It is essential to differentiate between design flaws and implementation defects, as they have different root causes, occur at different stages of the development process, and require different remediation approaches.

A securely designed system can still suffer from implementation defects that lead to exploitable vulnerabilities. Conversely, an insecure design cannot be remedied by perfect implementation because the necessary security controls were never established to defend against specific attacks.

A significant contributor to insecure design is the lack of business risk profiling for the software or system, leading to a failure in determining the appropriate level of security design required.

Practical Aspects

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

• Study of strategies for secure architecture and fundamental secure design principles

A07:2025 – Authentication Failures

This vulnerability exists when an attacker can successfully trick a system into recognizing an invalid or incorrect user as legitimate.

Practical Aspects

• Common authentication issues and pitfalls

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

A08:2025 – Software or Data Integrity Failures

Software and data integrity failures occur when code or infrastructure fails to protect against invalid or untrusted code and data being treated as trusted and valid.

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

Insecure CI/CD pipelines that lack software integrity checks can introduce risks of unauthorized access, insecure or malicious code, and system compromise.

Another example is a CI/CD process that pulls code or artifacts from unverified sources without validating them (e.g., via signature checking) before use.

Practical Aspects

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

• Implementation of safe update mechanisms and data integrity verification checks

A09:2025 – Security Logging and Alerting Failures

Without adequate logging and monitoring, attacks and breaches remain undetected. Furthermore, without effective alerting, responding quickly and effectively to security incidents becomes extremely difficult.

Insufficient logging, continuous monitoring, detection, and alerting capabilities hinder the initiation of active responses during security events.

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 enable early breach detection

A10:2025 – Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions

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

This typically involves one or more of the following failures:

• The application fails to prevent an unusual situation from occurring

• The application fails to identify the situation while it is happening

• The application responds poorly or not at all after the situation has occurred

SAST – Static Application Security Testing

1. Understanding static analysis and its optimal placement in the SDLC (shift-left approach)

2. Types of vulnerabilities detectable via SAST, comparing vulnerable code with secure code

3. Overview of SAST tools (e.g., Semgrep, SonarQube, Checkmarx, selected based on the client's technology stack)

4. Hands-on exercise: running a SAST scan on a repository with deliberately introduced vulnerabilities, interpreting results, and triaging false positives from real vulnerabilities

DAST – Dynamic Application Security Testing

1. Differences between SAST and DAST, focusing on black-box testing of running applications

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

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

4. Hands-on exercise: performing a DAST scan on a vulnerable test application (e.g., OWASP Juice Shop) and identifying and validating the findings

SCA – Software Composition Analysis

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

2. Introduction to SBOM (Software Bill of Materials): definition and importance

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

4. Hands-on exercise: running an SCA scan on a real project, identifying vulnerable dependencies, and developing a remediation plan (update, patch, or mitigate)