Secure Development & Bug Hunting

55 min

Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC)

Security must be integrated throughout the entire software development process, not added as an afterthought.

SSDLC PHASES
══════════════════════════════════════════════
REQUIREMENTS   → Security requirements, abuse cases
               Compliance requirements (GDPR, PCI)

DESIGN         → Threat modeling (STRIDE, PASTA)
               Security architecture review

DEVELOPMENT    → Secure coding guidelines
               Code reviews, pair programming

TESTING        → SAST (Static Application Security Testing)
               DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing)
               SCA (Software Composition Analysis)
               Penetration testing

DEPLOYMENT     → Security hardening
               Infrastructure-as-Code security scan
               Secrets management (no hardcoded keys!)

MAINTENANCE    → Vulnerability disclosure program
               Patch management
               Security monitoring
══════════════════════════════════════════════

Security Headers

ESSENTIAL HTTP SECURITY HEADERS
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'
  → Prevents XSS by restricting script/resource sources

Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains
  → Forces HTTPS for 1 year (HSTS)

X-Frame-Options: DENY
  → Prevents clickjacking (iframe embedding)

X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
  → Prevents MIME sniffing attacks

Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin
  → Controls referrer information leakage

Permissions-Policy: geolocation=(), microphone=()
  → Restricts browser feature access
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

DevSecOps Pipeline

SAST Tools: SonarQube, Semgrep, CodeQL, Checkmarx — scan source code
DAST Tools: OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite Enterprise — test running app
SCA Tools: Snyk, Dependabot, OWASP Dependency-Check — scan dependencies
Secrets Detection: GitLeaks, TruffleHog — find hardcoded credentials in repos
Container Scanning: Trivy, Grype — scan Docker images for CVEs

🛡️ OWASP Web Security Testing Guide

The OWASP WSTG is the definitive guide for testing web application security. Available free at owasp.org — covers every test case with methodology, tools, and remediation. Essential reading for any web security professional.