Application Security Weekly (Audio)
A podcast covering application security, DevOps, and DevSecOps. Hosted by Mike Shema and John Kinsella, it helps listeners find and fix software flaws effectively.
Episodes
Reducing Attack Surface & Evaluating Efficiency in Agents - Itamar Apelblat, David Goldschlag - ASW #389
SquidBleed reveals another vuln that's been lurking for decades, but its real lesson is in managing an attack surface. Regardless of whatever programming language you use, removing code is one of the best security steps you can take, followed by changing default configs to turn off uncommon features and ancient protocols. The Linux kernel's removal of strncpy is another example of managing attack
How AI Is Reshaping Identity Security at the Infrastructure Layer - Amit Masand, Neha Duggal, Ev Kontsevoy - ASW #388
Appsec has seen machine identities from daemons and processes to services, microservices, and cloud accounts. And now we have agents. Ev Kontsevoy talks about what it means to have engineers and agents interacting in an environment, and why a focus on actions can be more effective than roles. One of the biggest challenges in securing agents along with all of the other identities that organizations
Why Does It Matter Who or What Created the Code? - Matias Madou - ASW #387
Agents and LLMs are creating and reviewing code. They're a new tool to help developers write software and they're a new abstraction layer for expressing what code should do. But if we're focused on determining whether code is secure, where do we focus our attention on ensuring a secure outcome? Matias Madou talks about the challenges of finding metrics to help answer these questions. We walk throu
Scanner Results Are a Starting Point. Here's What Comes Next. - Federico Kirschbaum - ASW #386
Most AppSec teams are working through more findings than their teams can validate. SAST surfaces thousands of potential issues. DAST generates alert volume that outpaces triage capacity. Somewhere in that output are the vulnerabilities that matter, the ones that are actually exploitable in production. This conversation explores why automated testing often stops short of the hardest part of the job
BadHost, Dead CTFs, Exploding NPMs, and the Verizon DBIR - ASW #385
We dedicate an episode to catching up on appsec news with Kalyani Pawar. We see parsing problems that led to the BadHost vuln, which exposed lots of LLMs, MCPs, and agents to potential compromise. We wonder where to look for security education and practice as the camaraderie of the CTF community becomes infiltrated by LLMs. We talk about the tradeoffs in trust between using public packages vs. hav
AppSec Conversations on Agents, LLMs, and OWASP from RSAC - Merritt Maxim, Scott Clinton, Janet Worthington - ASW #384
We showcase recordings from this year's RSAC. At RSAC Conference 2026, Scott Clinton, Co-Chair and co-founder of the OWASP GenAI Security Project, shares insights from the project's latest research, including new landscape guides and evolving approaches to securing generative and agentic AI systems. The conversation explores critical gaps in GenAI data security, the rise of AI-assisted development
The State of AI & AppSec - Keith Hoodlet - ASW #383
This year has been a dichotomy of established secure design fundamentals and burgeoning chaos of LLM-driven vuln discovery. Keith Hoodlet returns to share his latest observations on what the recent news about Mythos, models, and harnesses means for appsec. He walks through the problems of misalignment, the potential development doom that looms behind a volume of vulns, and what modern code creatio
Why Basic Security Practices Still Work - Rob Allen - ASW #382
If you have to ditch your entire appsec strategy because you expect 2026 to bring more vulns more quickly, then you probably didn't have a good strategy in the first place. Rob Allen shares how the mentality of "assume breach" doesn't have to be a defeatist attitude and can instead be a way to change a catastrophic breach into a more contained one. We also talk about proactive security and what an
Keeping Up With the OWASP GenAI Project - Scott Clinton - ASW #381
Speed is the most common theme among developers and appsec teams working with LLMs and agents, from trying to keep up with patterns for deploying agents to dealing with more code faster to how the latest models impact code quality and security. The OWASP GenAI Project is helping organizations keep up with the speed of those changes and engaging the appsec community for sharing effective ways to ke
Top 10 Web Hacking Techniques of 2025 and a Hint for 2026 - James Kettle - ASW #380
Portswigger's list of web hacking techniques is a long-running celebration of curiosity and research from the web hacking community. James Kettle shares his thoughts on the entries from 2025 and how he expects LLMs and agents to influence what the list will look like for next year. He also shares some insights on using LLMs for his own blackbox research, giving us a peek into the work he'll be sha
The Human Aspect of Red Teams - Brian Fox, Tom Tovar, T. Gwyddon 'Data' Owen - ASW #379
Red team exercises set goals to see if a particular outcome can be accomplished through a simulated attack, but the ultimate outcome should be educating the org about how to improve tools and processes that make attacks more difficult to succeed. Gwyddon "Data" Owen shares his experience building a red team, creating an exercise, and leveraging the results to improve security. And while the adopti
Securing Software's Journey with the OWASP SPVS - Ido Geffen, Rohan Ravindranath, Cameron W., Farshad Abasi - ASW #378
It's one thing to write secure code, it's another to release it into the wild. That code needs to be designed, built, tested, released, and maintained. Farshad Abasi and Cameron Walters explain how the OWASP Secure Pipeline Verification Standard picks up from where ASVS left off, how it complements other supply chain security efforts like SLSA, and why they updated it with explicit coverage for AI
AppSec News Roundup on Claude Code Leak, Axios NPM Compromise, Secure Design - Idan Plotnik, Raj Mallempati - ASW #377
Security problems aren't changing very much even though security teams are. We catch up on the implications of the Claude Code source leak, the very human lessons from the axios NPM compromise, and what secure design looks like when it involves agents, humans, or both. AppSec has always celebrated interesting and impactful vulns. And LLMs are now a favored tool for finding flaws. We shouldn't forg
Developing the Skills Needed for Modern Software Development - Keith Hoodlet, Shashwat Sehgal, Ron Rasin - ASW #376
The future of secure software is going through a mix of skills expected of humans and skills files created for LLMs. We might even posit that appsec as a discipline will fade (and that might not even be a bad thing!). Keith Hoodlet describes the skills he was looking for in building teams of security researchers and why there's still an emphasis on the ability to learn about and understand how sof
Why Proactive Security Is Far Better Than Patching - Erik Nost - ASW #375
So much of appsec's efforts can be consumed by vuln management and a race to patch security flaws. But that's more a symptom of the ease of scanning and the volume of CVEs. Erik Nost walks through the principles behind proactive security, why the concept sounds familiar to secure by design, and why organizations still struggle with creating effective practices for visibility. Resources https://w
Creating Better Security Guidance and Code with LLMs - Mark Curphey - ASW #374
What happens when secure coding guidance goes stale? What happens LLMs write code from scratch? Mark Curphy walks us through his experience updating documentation for writing secure code in Go and recreating one of his own startups. One of the themes of this conversation is how important documentation is, whether it's intended for humans or for prompts to LLMs. Importantly, LLMs don't innovate on
Making Medical Devices Secure - Tamil Mathi - ASW #373
Medical devices are a special segment of the IoT world where availability and patient safety are paramount. Tamil Mathi explains why many devices need to fail open -- the opposite of what traditional appsec approaches might initially think -- and what makes threat modeling these devices interesting and unique. He also covers how to get started in this space, from where to learn hardware hacking ba
Modern AppSec that keeps pace with AI development - James Wickett - ASW #372
As more developers turn to LLMs to generate code, more appsec teams are turning to LLMs to conduct security code reviews. One of the biggest themes in all the discussion around LLMs, agents, and code is speed -- more code created faster. James Wickett shares why speed continues to pose a challenge to appsec teams and why that's often because teams haven't invested enough in foundational appsec pri
Helping Users with Practical Advice to Protect their Digital Devices - Runa Sandvik - ASW #371
Journalists put a lot of effort into collecting information and protecting their sources, but everyone can benefit from having a digital environment that's more secure and more privacy protecting. Runa Sandvik shares her experience working with journalists and targeted groups to craft plans for how they use their devices and manage their information. And she also makes the point that the burden of
Conducting Secure Code Analysis with LLMs - ASW #370
A major premise of appsec is figuring out effective ways to answer the question, "What security flaws are in this code?" The nature of the question doesn't really change depending on who or what wrote the code. In other words, LLMs writing code really just means there's mode code to secure. So, what about using LLMs to find security flaws? Just how effective and efficient are they? We talk with Ad
Bringing Strong Authentication and Granular Authorization for GenAI - Dan Moore - ASW #369
When it comes to agents and MCPs, the interesting security discussion isn't that they need strong authentication and authorization, but what that authn/z story should look like, where does it get implemented, and who implements it. Dan Moore shares the useful parallels in securing APIs that should be brought into the world of MCPs -- especially because so many are still interacting with APIs. Reso
Focusing on Proactive Controls in the Face of LLM-Assisted Malware - Rob Allen - ASW #368
Everyone is turning to LLMs to generate code, including attackers. Thus, it's no great surprise that there are now examples of malware generated by LLMs. We discuss the implications of more malware with Rob Allen and what it means for orgs that want to protect themselves from ransomware. Resources https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/voidlink-cloud-malware-shows-clear-signs-of-being-ai
Building proactive defenses that reflect the true nature of modern software risk - Paul Davis - ASW #367
Supply chain security remains one of the biggest time sinks for appsec teams and developers, even making it onto the latest iteration of the OWASP Top 10 list. Paul Davis joins us to talk about strategies to proactively defend your environment from the different types of attacks that target supply chains and package dependencies. We also discuss how to gain some of the time back by being smarter a
Lessons from MongoBleed, CWE Top 25, and Secure Coding Benchmarks - ASW #366
MongoBleed and a recent OWASP CRS bypass show how parsing problems remain a source of security flaws regardless of programming language. We talk with Kalyani Pawar about how these problems rank against the Top 25 CWEs for 2025 and what it means for relying on LLMs to generate code. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-366
Secure By Design Is Better Than Secure By Myth - Bob Lord - ASW #365
Not all infosec advice is helpful. Bad advice wastes time, makes people less secure, and takes focus away from making software more secure. Bob Lord talks about his efforts to tamp down hacklore -- the security myths and mistakes that crop up in news stories and advice to users. He talks about how these myths come about, why they're harmful, and how they're related to the necessity of building sof
The Upsides and Downsides of LLM-Generated Code - Chris Wysopal - ASW #364
Developers are adding LLMs to their code creation toolboxes, using them to assist with writing and reviewing code. Chris Wysopal talks about the security downsides of relying on LLMs and how appsec needs to adapt to dealing with more code at a faster pace. Resources https://www.veracode.com/blog/genai-code-security-report/ https://www.veracode.com/blog/ai-code-security-october-update/ https
AI-Era AppSec: Transparency, Trust, and Risk Beyond the Firewall - Felipe Zipitria, Steve Springett, Aruneesh Salhotra, Ken Huang - ASW #363
In an era dominated by AI-powered security tools and cloud-native architectures, are traditional Web Application Firewalls still relevant? Join us as we speak with Felipe Zipitria, co-leader of the OWASP Core Rule Set (CRS) project. Felipe has been at the forefront of open-source security, leading the development of one of the world's most widely deployed WAF rule sets, trusted by organizations gl
Modern AppSec: OWASP SAMM, AI Secure Coding, Threat Modeling & Champions - Sebastian Deleersnyder, Dustin Lehr, James Manico, Adam Shostack - ASW #362
Using OWASP SAMM to assess and improve compliance with the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is an excellent strategy, as SAMM provides a framework for secure development practices such as secure by design principles and handling vulns. Segment Resources: https://owaspsamm.org/ https://cybersecuritycoalition.be/resource/a-strategic-approach-to-product-security-with-owasp-samm/ As genAI becomes a more
Developing Open Source Skills for Maintaining Projects - Kat Cosgrove - ASW #361
Open source projects benefit from support that takes many shapes. Kat Cosgrove shares her experience across the Kubernetes project and the different ways people can make meaningful contributions to it. One of the underlying themes is that code is written for other people. That means PRs need to be understandable, discussions need to be enlightening, documentation needs to be clear, and collaborati
Making OAuth Scale Securely for MCPs - Aaron Parecki - ASW #360
The MCP standard gave rise to dreams of interconnected agents and nightmares of what those interconnected agents would do with unfettered access to APIs, data, and local systems. Aaron Parecki explains how OAuth's new Client ID Metadata Documents spec provides more security for MCPs and the reasons why the behavior and design of MCPs required a new spec like this. Segment resources: https://aaro
Making TN Critical Infrastructure the Most Secure in the Nation - T. Gwyddon 'Data' ("Gwee-thin") Owen, James Cotter - ASW #359
For OT systems, uptime is paramount. That's a hard rule that makes maintaining, upgrading, and securing them a complex struggle. Tomas "Data" Owens and James Cotter discuss how Tennessee is tackling the organizational and technical challenges that come with hardening OT systems across the state. Those challenges range from old technology (like RS-232 over Wi-Fi!?) to limited budgets. They talk abo
Figuring Out Where to Start with Secure Code - ASW #358
What are your favorite resources for secure code? Co-hosts John Kinsella and Kalyani Pawar talk about the reality of bringing security into a business. We talk about the role of the OWASP Top 10 and the OWASP ASVS in crafting security programs. And balance that with a discussion in what's the best use of everyone's time -- developers and appsec folks alike -- in crafting code that's secure by desi
Secure Coding as Critical Thinking Instead of Vulnspotting - Matias Madou - ASW #357
Secure code should be grounded more in concepts like secure by default and secure by design than by "spot the vuln" thinking. Matias Madou shares his experience in secure coding training and the importance of teaching critical thinking. He also discusses why critical thinking is so closely related to threat modeling and how LLMs can be a tool for helping developers get beyond the superficial advic
Ransomware, Defaults, and Proactive Defenses - Rob Allen - ASW #356
Just how bad can things get if someone clicks on a link? Rob Allen joins us again to talk about ransomware, why putting too much attention on clicking links misses the larger picture of effective defenses, and what orgs can do to prepare for an influx of holiday-infused ransomware targeting. Segment resources https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/how-a-ransomware-gang-encrypted-nevada-g
Researching and Remediating RCEs via GitHub Actions - Bar Kaduri, Roi Nisimi - ASW #355
Pull requests are a core part of collaboration, whether in open or closed source. GitHub has documented some of the security consequences of misconfiguring how PRs can trigger actions. But what happens when repo owners don't read the docs? Bar Kaduri and Roi Nisimi walk through their experience in reading docs, finding vulns, demonstrating exploits, and working with repo owners to improve their se
Quantum Computing Isn't A Threat To Blockchains - Yet - Martha Bennett, Sandy Carielli - ASW #354
The post quantum encryption migration is going to be a challenge, but how much of a challenge? There are several reasons why it is different from every other protocol and cypher iteration in the past. Is today's hardware up to the task? Is it just swapping out a library, or is there more to it? What is the extent of software, systems, and architecture that have to be updated or replaced to complet
Reacting to Ransomware and Setting Secure Defaults - Rob Allen - ASW #353
Ransomware attacks typically don't care about memory safety and dependency scanning, they often target old, unpatched vulns and too often they succeed. Rob Allen shares some of the biggest cases he's seen, what they have in common, and what appsec teams could do better to help them. Too much software still requires custom configuration to make it more secure. And too few software makers are embrac
Inside the OWASP GenAI Security Project - Steve Wilson - ASW #352
Interest and participation in the OWASP GenAI Security Project has exploded over the last two years. Steve Wilson explains why it was important for the project to grow beyond just a Top Ten list and address more audiences than just developers. He also talks about how the growth of AI Agents influences the areas that appsec teams need to focus on. Whether apps are created by genAI or directly use g
Finding Large Bounties with Large Language Models - Nico Waisman - ASW #351
Software has forever had flaws and humans have forever been finding and fixing them. With LLMs generating code, appsec has also been trying to determine how well LLMs can find flaws. Nico Waisman talks about XBOW's LLM-based pentesting, how it climbed a bug bounty leaderboard, how it uses feedback loops for better pentests, and how they handle (and even welcome!) hallucinations. In the news, using
Changing the Vuln Conversation from Volume to Remediation - Francesco Cipollone - ASW #350
Dealing with vulns tends to be a discussion about prioritization. After all, there a tons of CVEs and dependencies with known vulns. It's important to figure out how to present developers with useful vuln info that doesn't overwhelm them. Francesco Cipollone shares how to redirect that discussion to focus on remediation and how to incorporate LLMs into this process without losing your focus or los
Design Errors in Entra ID, Design Defenses in iOS, Design Difficulties in DeepSeek - ASW #349
In the news, Microsoft encounters a new cascade of avoidable errors with Entra ID, Apple improves iOS with hardware-backed memory safety, DeepSeek demonstrates the difficulty in reviewing models, curl reduces risk by eliminating code, preserving the context of code reviews, and more! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-34
How OWASP's GenAI Security Project keeps up with the pace of AI/Agentic changes - Scott Clinton - ASW #348
This week, we chat with Scott Clinton, board member and co-chain of the OWASP GenAI Security Project. This project has become a massive organization within OWASP with hundreds of volunteers and thousands of contributors. This team has been cranking out new tools, reports and guidance for practitioners month after month for over a year now. We start off discussing how Scott and other leaders have m
Limitations and Liabilities of LLM Coding - Seemant Sehgal, Ted Shorter - ASW #347
Up first, the ASW news of the week. At Black Hat 2025, Doug White interviews Ted Shorter, CTO of Keyfactor, about the quantum revolution already knocking on cybersecurity's door. They discuss the terrifying reality of quantum computing's power to break RSA and ECC encryption—the very foundations of modern digital life. With 2030 set as the deadline for transitioning away from legacy crypto, organi
AI, APIs, and the Next Cyber Battleground: Black Hat 2025 - Chris Boehm, Idan Plotnik, Josh Lemos, Michael Callahan - ASW #346
In this must-see BlackHat 2025 interview, Doug White sits down with Michael Callahan, CMO at Salt Security, for a high-stakes conversation about Agentic AI, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, and the massive API security risks reshaping the cyber landscape. Broadcast live from the CyberRisk TV studio at Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, the discussion pulls back the curtain on how autonomous AI agents a
Translating Security Regulations into Secure Projects - Roman Zhukov, Emily Fox - ASW #345
The EU Cyber Resilience Act joins the long list of regulations intended to improve the security of software delivered to users. Emily Fox and Roman Zhukov share their experience education regulators on open source software and educating open source projects on security. They talk about creating a baseline for security that addresses technical items, maintaining projects, and supporting project own
Managing the Minimization of a Container Attack Surface - Neil Carpenter - ASW #344
A smaller attack surface should lead to a smaller list of CVEs to track, which in turn should lead to a smaller set of vulns that you should care about. But in practice, keeping something like a container image small has a lot of challenges in terms of what should be considered minimal. Neil Carpenter shares advice and anecdotes on what it takes to refine a container image and to change an org's e
The Future of Supply Chain Security - Janet Worthington - ASW #343
Open source software is a massive contribution that provides everything from foundational frameworks to tiny single-purpose libraries. We walk through the dimensions of trust and provenance in the software supply chain with Janet Worthington. And we discuss how even with new code generated by LLMs and new terms like slopsquatting, a lot of the most effective solutions are old techniques. Resources
Uniting software development and application security - Will Vandevanter, Jonathan Schneider - ASW #342
Maintaining code is a lot more than keeping dependencies up to date. It involved everything from keeping old code running to changing frameworks to even changing implementation languages. Jonathan Schneider talks about the engineering considerations of refactoring and rewriting code, why code maintenance is important to appsec, and how to build confidence that adding automation to a migration resu
How Product-Led Security Leads to Paved Roads - Julia Knecht - ASW #341
A successful strategy in appsec is to build platforms with defaults and designs that ease the burden of security choices for developers. But there's an important difference between expecting (or requiring!) developers to use a platform and building a platform that developers embrace. Julia Knecht shares her experience in building platforms with an attention to developer needs, developer experience
Rise of Compromised LLMs - Sohrob Kazerounian - ASW #340
AI is more than LLMs. Machine learning algorithms have been part of infosec solutions for a long time. For appsec practitioners, a key concern is always going to be how to evaluate the security of software or a system. In some cases, it doesn't matter if a human or an LLM generated code -- the code needs to be reviewed for common flaws and design problems. But the creation of MCP servers and LLM-b
Getting Started with Security Basics on the Way to Finding a Specialization - ASW #339
What are some appsec basics? There's no monolithic appsec role. Broadly speaking, appsec tends to branch into engineering or compliance paths, each with different areas of focus despite having shared vocabularies and the (hopefully!) shared goal of protecting software, data, and users. The better question is, "What do you want to secure?" We discuss the Cybersecurity Skills Framework put together
Checking in on the State of Appsec in 2025 - Janet Worthington, Sandy Carielli - ASW #338
Appsec still deals with ancient vulns like SQL injection and XSS. And now LLMs are generating code along side humans. Sandy Carielli and Janet Worthington join us once again to discuss what all this new code means for appsec practices. On a positive note, the prevalence of those ancient vulns seems to be diminishing, but the rising use of LLMs is expanding a new (but not very different) attack sur
Simple Patterns for Complex Secure Code Reviews - Louis Nyffenegger - ASW #337
Manual secure code reviews can be tedious and time intensive if you're just going through checklists. There's plenty of room for linters and compilers and all the grep-like tools to find flaws. Louis Nyffenegger describes the steps of a successful code review process. It's a process that starts with understanding code, which can even benefit from an LLM assistant, and then applies that understandi
How Fuzzing Barcodes Raises the Bar for Secure Code - Artur Cygan - ASW #336
Fuzzing has been one of the most successful ways to improve software quality. And it demonstrates how improving software quality improves security. Artur Cygan shares his experience in building and applying fuzzers to barcode scanners, smart contracts, and just about any code you can imagine. We go through the useful relationship between unit tests and fuzzing coverage, nudging fuzzers into deeper
Threat Modeling With Good Questions and Without Checklists - Farshad Abasi - ASW #335
What makes a threat modeling process effective? Do you need a long list of threat actors? Do you need a long list of terms? What about a short list like STRIDE? Has an effective process ever come out of a list? Farshad Abasi joins our discussion as we explain why the answer to most of those questions is No and describe the kinds of approaches that are more conducive to useful threat models. Resour
Bringing CISA's Secure by Design Principles to OT Systems - Matthew Rogers - ASW #334
CISA has been championing Secure by Design principles. Many of the principles are universal, like adopting MFA and having opinionated defaults that reduce the need for hardening guides. Matthew Rogers talks about how the approach to Secure by Design has to be tailored for Operational Technology (OT) systems. These systems have strict requirements on safety and many of them rely on protocols that a
AIs, MCPs, and the Acutal Work that LLMs Are Generating - ASW #333
The recent popularity of MCPs is surpassed only by the recent examples deficiencies of their secure design. The most obvious challenge is how MCPs, and many more general LLM use cases, have erased two decades of security principles behind separating code and data. We take a look at how developers are using LLMs to generate code and continue our search for where LLMs are providing value to appsec.
AI in AppSec: Agentic Tools, Vibe Coding Risks & Securing Non-Human Identities - Mo Aboul-Magd, Shahar Man, Brian Fox, Mark Lambert - ASW #332
ArmorCode unveils Anya—the first agentic AI virtual security champion designed specifically for AppSec and product security teams. Anya brings together conversation and context to help AppSec, developers and security teams cut through the noise, prioritize risks, and make faster, smarter decisions across code, cloud, and infrastructure. Built into the ArmorCode ASPM Platform and backed by 25B find
Appsec News & Interviews from RSAC on Identity and AI - Rami Saas, Charlotte Wylie - ASW #331
In the news, Coinbase deals with bribes and insider threat, the NCSC notes the cross-cutting problem of incentivizing secure design, we cover some research that notes the multitude of definitions for secure design, and discuss the new Cybersecurity Skills Framework from the OpenSSF and Linux Foundation. Then we share two more sponsored interviews from this year's RSAC Conference. With more types o
Secure Code Reviews, LLM Coding Assistants, and Trusting Code - Rey Bango, Karim Toubba, Gal Elbaz - ASW #330
Developers are relying on LLMs as coding assistants, so where are the LLM assistants for appsec? The principles behind secure code reviews don't really change based on who write the code, whether human or AI. But more code means more reasons for appsec to scale its practices and figure out how to establish trust in code, packages, and designs. Rey Bango shares his experience with secure code revie
AI Era, New Risks: How Data-Centric Security Reduces Emerging AppSec Threats - Vishal Gupta, Idan Plotnik - ASW #329
We catch up on news after a week of BSidesSF and RSAC Conference. Unsurprisingly, AI in all its flavors, from agentic to gen, was inescapable. But perhaps more surprising (and more unfortunate) is how much the adoption of LLMs has increased the attack surface within orgs. The news is heavy on security issues from MCPs and a novel alignment bypass against LLMs. Not everything is genAI as we cover s
Secure Designs, UX Dragons, Vuln Dungeons - Jack Cable - ASW #328
In this live recording from BSidesSF we explore the factors that influence a secure design, talk about how to avoid the bite of UX dragons, and why designs should put classes of vulns into dungeons. But we can't threat model a secure design forever and we can't oversimplify guidance for a design to be "more secure". Kalyani Pawar and Jack Cable join the discussion to provide advice on evaluating s
Managing Secrets - Vlad Matsiiako - ASW #327
Secrets end up everywhere, from dev systems to CI/CD pipelines to services, certificates, and cloud environments. Vlad Matsiiako shares some of the tactics that make managing secrets more secure as we discuss the distinctions between secure architectures, good policies, and developer friendly tools. We've thankfully moved on from forced 90-day user password rotations, but that doesn't mean there i
More WAFs in Blocking Mode and More Security Headaches from LLMs - Sandy Carielli, Janet Worthington - ASW #326
The breaches will continue until appsec improves. Janet Worthington and Sandy Carielli share their latest research on breaches from 2024, WAFs in 2025, and where secure by design fits into all this. WAFs are delivering value in a way that orgs are relying on them more for bot management and fraud detection. But adopting phishing-resistant authentication solutions like passkeys and deploying WAFs s
In Search of Secure Design - ASW #325
We have a top ten list entry for Insecure Design, pledges to CISA's Secure by Design principles, and tons of CVEs that fall into familiar categories of flaws. But what does it mean to have a secure design and how do we get there? There are plenty of secure practices that orgs should implement are supply chains, authentication, and the SDLC. Those practices address important areas of risk, but only
Avoiding Appsec's Worst Practices - ASW #324
We take advantage of April Fools to look at some of appsec's myths, mistakes, and behaviors that lead to bad practices. It's easy to get trapped in a status quo of chasing CVEs or discussing which direction to shift security. But scrutinizing decimal points in CVSS scores or rearranging tools misses the opportunity for more strategic thinking. We satirize some worst practices in order to have a mo
Finding a Use for GenAI in AppSec - Keith Hoodlet - ASW #323
LLMs are helping devs write code, but is it secure code? How are LLMs helping appsec teams? Keith Hoodlet returns to talk about where he's seen value from genAI, where it fits in with tools like source code analysis and fuzzers, and where its limitations mean we'll be relying on humans for a while. Those limitations don't mean appsec should dismiss LLMs as a tool. It means appsec should understand
Redlining the Smart Contract Top 10 - Shashank . - ASW #322
The crypto world is rife with smart contracts that have been outsmarted by attackers, with consequences in the millions of dollars (and more!). Shashank shares his research into scanning contracts for flaws, how the classes of contract flaws have changed in the last few years, and how optimistic we can be about the future of this space. Segment Resources: https://scs.owasp.org https://scs.owasp.o
CISA's Secure by Design Principles, Pledge, and Progress - Jack Cable - ASW #321
Just three months into 2025 and we already have several hundred CVEs for XSS and SQL injection. Appsec has known about these vulns since the late 90s. Common defenses have been known since the early 2000s. Jack Cable talks about CISA's Secure by Design principles and how they're trying to refocus businesses on addressing vuln classes and prioritizing software quality -- with security one of those
Keeping Curl Successful and Secure Over the Decades - Daniel Stenberg - ASW #320
Curl and libcurl are everywhere. Not only has the project maintained success for almost three decades now, but it's done that while being written in C. Daniel Stenberg talks about the challenges in dealing with appsec, the design philosophies that keep it secure, and fostering a community to create one of the most recognizable open source projects in the world. Segment Resources: https://daniel.h
Developer Environments, Developer Experience, and Security - Dan Moore - ASW #319
Minimizing latency, increasing performance, and reducing compile times are just a part of what makes a development environment better. Throw in useful tests and some useful security tools and you have an even better environment. Dan Moore talks about what motivates some developers to prefer a "local first" approach as we walk through what all of this means for security. Applying forgivable vs. unf
Top 10 Web Hacking Techniques of 2024 - James Kettle - ASW #318
We're getting close to two full decades of celebrating web hacking techniques. James Kettle shares which was his favorite, why the list is important to the web hacking community, and what inspires the kind of research that makes it onto the list. We discuss why we keep seeing eternal flaws like XSS and SQL injection making these lists year after year and how clever research is still finding new at
Code Scanning That Works With Your Code - Scott Norberg - ASW #317
Code scanning is one of the oldest appsec practices. In many cases, simple grep patterns and some fancy regular expressions are enough to find many of the obvious software mistakes. Scott Norberg shares his experience with encountering code scanners that didn't find the .NET vuln classes he needed to find and why that led him to creating a scanner from scratch. We talk about some challenges in tes
Threat Modeling That Helps the Business - Akira Brand, Sandy Carielli - ASW #316
Threat modeling has been in the appsec toolbox for decades. But it hasn't always been used and it hasn't always been useful. Sandy Carielli shares what she's learned from talking to orgs about what's been successful, and what's failed, when they've approached this practice. Akira Brand joins to talk about her direct experience with building threat models with developers. Speculative data flow atta
Security the AI SDLC - Niv Braun - ASW #315
A lot of AI security boils down to the boring, but important, software security topics that appsec teams have been dealing with for decades. Niv Braun explains the distinctions between AI-related and AI-specific security as we avoid the FUD and hype of genAI to figure out where appsec teams can invest their time. He notes that data scientists have been working with ML and sensitive data sets for a
Appsec Predictions for 2025 - Cody Scott - ASW #314
What's in store for appsec in 2025? Sure, there'll be some XSS and SQL injection, but what about trends that might influence how appsec teams plan? Cody Scott shares five cybersecurity and privacy predictions and we take a deep dive into three of them. We talk about finding value to appsec from AI, why IoT and OT need both programmatic and technical changes, and what the implications of the next X
Discussing Useful Security Requirements with Developers - Ixchel Ruiz - ASW #313
There's a pernicious myth that developers don't care about security. In practice, they care about code quality. What developers don't care for is ambiguous requirements. Ixchel Ruiz shares her experience is discussing software designs, the challenges in prioritizing dev efforts, and how to help open source project maintainers with their issue backlog. Segment resources: https://github.com/ossf/sc
DefectDojo and Bringing Quality Appsec Tools to Small Appsec Teams - Greg Anderson - ASW #312
All appsec teams need quality tools and all developers benefit from appsec guidance that's focused on meaningful results. Greg Anderson shares his experience in bringing the OWASP DefectDojo project to life and maintaining its value for over a decade. He reminds us that there are tons of appsec teams with low budgets and few members that need tools to help them bring useful insights to developers.
Applying Usability and Transparency to Security - Hannah Sutor - ASW #311
Practices around identity and managing credentials have improved greatly since the days of infosec mandating 90-day password rotations. But those improvements didn't arise from a narrow security view. Hannah Sutor talks about the importance of balancing security with usability, the importance of engaging with users when determining defaults, and setting an example for transparency in security disc
Looking Back on 2024 - ASW #310
We do our usual end of year look back on the topics, news, and trends that caught our attention. We covered some OWASP projects, the ongoing attention and promises of generative AI, and big events from the XZ Utils backdoor to Microsoft's Recall to Crowdstrike's outage. Segment resources https://prods.ec https://owasp.org/www-project-spvs/ https://genai.owasp.org/resource/owasp-top-10-for-llm-ap
Recommended
Doctor Zhivago Slow Read
Conspiracy Files with Paige Carter
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
The Theory of Psychoanalysis - Carl Jung
A Life Engineered
پادکست بهزاد بلور | Behzad Bolour's Podcast
The Rabbit Hole: Conspiracy Theories
The Swerve Podcast: Obscure Topics | Conspiracy Theories
The Bread and Banter Podcast
The Conspiracy Podcast
Cult of Conspiracy
Dispatches from Reality
