Web Application Security, 2nd Edition

Preface

Welcome to Web Application Security: Exploitation and Countermeasures for Modern Web Applications. In this preface, we will discuss the book’s content and who this book is for, including the skill sets required to make the most of the technical content in the following chapters. Reading the preface will help you understand if this book is for you.

Changes from the First Edition

You will find a significant number of changes when comparing this book to its prior first edition. There are over one hundred pages of new content, but beyond that there are dozens of edited pages.

The first edition was primarily focused at the entry- and mid-level engineer, but feedback often requested more advanced content from which you could continue down a particular learning path for each chapter. Most chapters now have advanced content offered, and as such my hope is that senior security professionals will now benefit more from reading this book.

Additionally, the book has had a significant amount of updates to incorporate recent technologies. I felt it imperative to add example cases and code for securing and attacking new but common forms of technology in web applications, for example GraphQL and NoSQL databases.

The second edition has significant swaths of new security content including content covering the latest and most popular web application technologies. It also has been modified to include more advanced content per chapter and to incorporate dozens, if not hundreds, of reader and ...