Web Application Security, A Beginner's Guide

Keeping Your Source Code Secret

In the battle between web application developers and attackers, the attackers unfortunately have the upper hand in many ways. Developers have limited (and usually extremely tight) schedules; attackers have as much time as they want. Worse, developers have to make sure every possible avenue of attack has been closed off, while attackers only have to find one flaw to succeed. But web developers do have one great advantage over attackers: attackers don’t have access to the application’s source.

To users and attackers alike, a web application is an opaque black box. They can give input to the black box and get output in return, but they really don’t have any way to see what’s going on in the middle.

Note

An extremely ...