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 understanding to a search for developer patterns that lead to common mistakes like mishandling data, not enforcing a control flow, or not defending against unexpected application states. He explains how finding those kinds of more impactful bugs are rewarding for the reviewer and valuable to the code owner. It involves reading a lot of code, but Louis offers tips on how to keep notes, keep an app's context in mind, and keep code secure.
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Louis Nyffenegger is the founder of PentesterLab, creator of hundreds of hands-on web security labs, and a veteran pentester, AppSec engineer, and code reviewer. He speaks worldwide about security code review, secure coding, JWT, and SAML, training red, blue, and AppSec teams to uncover high-impact bugs buried deep in real code.
