After getting familiar with the vulnerabilities and the attack methods, participants learn about the general approach and the methodology for security testing, and the techniques that can be applied to reveal specific vulnerabilities. Security testing should start with information gathering about the system (ToC, i.e. Target of Evaluation), then a thorough threat modeling should reveal and rate all threats, arriving to the most appropriate risk analysis-driven test plan.

Security evaluations can happen at various steps of the SDLC, and so we discuss design review, code review, reconnaissance and information gathering about the system, testing the implementation and the testing and hardening the environment for secure deployment. Many different security testing techniques are introduced in details, like taint analysis and heuristics-based code review, static code analysis, dynamic web vulnerability testing or fuzzing. Various types of tools are introduced that can be applied in order to automate security evaluation of software products, which is also supported by a number of exercises, where we execute these tools to analyze the already discussed vulnerable code. Many real life case studies support better understanding of various vulnerabilities.

This course prepares testers and QA staff to adequately plan and precisely execute security tests, select and use the most appropriate tools and techniques to find even hidden security flaws, and thus gives essential practical skills that can be applied on the next day working day.