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

A01:2025 – Broken Access Control

Access control mechanisms enforce policies to ensure that users cannot perform actions beyond their intended permissions. Failures in this area often result in unauthorized disclosure, modification, or destruction of data, as well as 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 set up in a manner that creates security vulnerabilities due to incorrect configurations.

Practical Aspects

• Real-world examples of 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 involve compromises or breakdowns in the processes of building, distributing, or updating software. These are frequently caused 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 obstacles, such as CPU performance limitations and the complexity of private key/certificate management, have been mitigated by modern CPUs featuring instructions designed to accelerate encryption (e.g., AES support) and simplified management services like LetsEncrypt.org, along with tightly integrated certificate management solutions provided by major cloud vendors.

Beyond securing the transport layer, it is crucial to identify which data requires encryption at rest and which data 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 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 significance 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 permit attackers to inject malicious code or commands (such as SQL or shell code) into input fields, causing the system to execute them as if they were legitimate parts of the codebase. This can lead to severe consequences.

Practical Aspects

• A detailed examination 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, characterized as “missing or ineffective control design.”

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

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

A key factor contributing to insecure design is the lack of business risk profiling during software or system development, 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

Authentication failures occur when an attacker successfully tricks 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 occur when code and infrastructure fail to protect against invalid or untrusted code or data being treated as trusted and valid.

An example of this is when an application relies on plugins, libraries, or modules from untrusted sources, repositories, and 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, such as by checking signatures or using similar mechanisms.

Practical Aspects

• Focus on issues like untrusted software updates and data tampering

• Safe update mechanisms and data integrity checks

A09:2025 – Security Logging and Alerting Failures

Without robust logging and monitoring, attacks and breaches remain undetected. Furthermore, without effective alerting, it becomes extremely difficult to respond quickly and effectively during a security incident.

Insufficient logging, continuous monitoring, detection, and alerting prevent the initiation of active responses when needed.

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, resulting in crashes, unexpected behavior, and potential vulnerabilities.

This often involves one or more of the following shortcomings:

• The application fails to prevent an unusual situation from occurring

• It fails to 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 in the SDLC (shift left)

2. Types of vulnerabilities detectable through SAST, comparing vulnerable code versus 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 intentionally introduced vulnerabilities, interpret the results, and triage false positives against real vulnerabilities

DAST – Dynamic Application Security Testing

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

2. The DAST scanning 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), 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 importance

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 formulate a remediation plan (update, patch, mitigate)