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

A01:2025 – Broken Access Control

Access control policies ensure that users cannot perform actions beyond their intended permissions. Failures in this area often 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

• Secure access control mechanisms and best practices

A02:2025 – Security Misconfiguration

Security misconfiguration occurs when a system, application, or cloud service is improperly set up, creating exploitable security gaps.

Practical Aspects

• Case studies of real-world misconfigurations

• Strategies to prevent misconfiguration, utilizing configuration management and automation tools

A03:2025 – Software Supply Chain Failures

Software supply chain failures involve compromises in the process of building, distributing, or updating software. These are often triggered by vulnerabilities or malicious alterations in third-party code, tools, or other dependencies that the system relies upon.

A04:2025 – Cryptographic Failures

In general, all data in transit should be encrypted at the transport layer (OSI layer 4). Previous barriers, such as CPU performance and private key/certificate management, are now mitigated by CPUs featuring instructions that accelerate encryption (e.g., AES support) and simplified key management services like LetsEncrypt.org, alongside tightly integrated certificate management offerings from major cloud vendors.

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

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

Practical Aspects

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

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

A05:2025 – Injection

Injection vulnerabilities are system flaws that allow attackers 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 lead to severe consequences.

Practical Aspects

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

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

A06:2025 – Insecure Design

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

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

A secure design can still suffer from implementation defects that lead to exploitable vulnerabilities. Conversely, an insecure design cannot be corrected by perfect implementation, as the necessary security controls were never originally designed to defend against specific attacks.

A key contributor to insecure design is the lack of business risk profiling for the software or system being developed, leading to an inability to determine the required level of security design.

Practical Aspects

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

• Studying strategies for secure architecture and secure design principles

A07:2025 – Authentication Failures

This vulnerability exists when an attacker can trick 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 relate to code and infrastructure that fails to protect against invalid or untrusted code or data being treated as trusted and valid.

An example of this is an application relying 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, or system compromise.

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

Practical Aspects

• Addressing issues like untrusted software updates and data tampering

• Implementing safe update mechanisms and data integrity checks

A09:2025 – Security Logging and Alerting Failures

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

Insufficient logging, continuous monitoring, detection, and alerting to trigger active responses are common failures.

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 occurs when programs fail to prevent, detect, and respond to unusual or unpredictable situations, leading to crashes, unexpected behavior, or vulnerabilities.

This typically involves one or more of the following failures:

• The application does not prevent an unusual situation from occurring

• The application does not identify the situation as it happens

• The application responds poorly or not at all to the situation after it occurs

SAST – Static Application Security Testing

1. Understanding static analysis and when to run it in 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 from 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 flow, 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), identify, and validate findings

SCA – Software Composition Analysis

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

2. SBOM (Software Bill of Materials): What it is and why it matters

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)