Web Application Security, 2nd Edition

Chapter 26. Vulnerability Discovery

After securely architected code has been designed, written, and reviewed, a pipeline should be put in place to ensure that no vulnerabilities slip through the cracks. Typically, applications with the best architecture experience the least amount of vulnerabilities and the lowest risk vulnerabilities. After that, applications with sufficiently secure code review processes in place experience fewer vulnerabilities than those without such processes (but more than those with a secure-by-default architecture).

Even securely architected and sufficiently reviewed applications still fall prey to the occasional vulnerability. Vulnerabilities can slip through reviews, or come as a result of an unexpected behavior when the application is run in a different environment or its intended environment is upgraded. As a result, you need vulnerability discovery processes in place that target production code rather than preproduction code.

Security Automation

The initial step in discovering vulnerabilities past the architecture and review phases is the automation phase. Automating vulnerability discovery is essential, but not because it will catch all vulnerabilities. Instead, automation is (usually) cheap, effective, and long-lasting.

Automated discovery techniques are fantastic at finding routine security flaws in code that may have slipped past architects and code reviewers. Automated discovery techniques are not good at finding logical vulnerabilities specific ...