Secure Code Review

5 minutes 5 Questions

Secure code review is the process of examining an application's source code to discover security flaws, coding errors, and vulnerabilities that may be exploited by an attacker. The primary objective of secure code review is to ensure the codebase's adherence to security best practices, reduce the l…

Guide: Secure Code Review

Secure Code Review is a crucial component of security assessment methodologies and plays a valuable role in the identification and mitigation of security vulnerabilities in code.

Why It Is Important:
Secure Code Review is crucial because it is a proactive measure to identify and fix vulnerabilities early in the development process before the application is in production, reducing the risk and cost associated with fixing them at a late stage.

What It Is:
Secure Code Review is the process of auditing the source code of an application to verify that the proper security controls are in place and that the code is free of vulnerabilities. It involves checking the code against a set of guidelines to ensure it meets security standards.

How It Works:
In Secure Code Review, experts manually inspect the source code or use automated tools to find security issues, like buffer overflows, SQL injections, Cross-site scripting (XSS), etc. Once these issues are identified, they are prioritized based on the risk they pose, and remediation steps are provided.

Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Secure Code Review:
1. Understand the Purpose: Be clear on why Secure Code Review is important. It's mainly to find and fix vulnerabilities early in the process to enhance application security.
2. Know the Process: Understand that Secure Code Review can be performed manually or using automated tools, and it involves going through the code line by line.
3. Recognize Common Vulnerabilities: Be familiar with common coding vulnerabilities like XSS, SQL injections, and buffer overflows.
4. Remediation strategies: Understand the ways in which identified vulnerabilities can be mitigated.
Remember, correct answers not only require knowledge about code review but also the understanding of risk assessment and mitigation.

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Question 1

During a secure code review, a developer finds that a SQL query used in a web application contains unsanitized user input. What type of vulnerability is this?

SQL Injection Directory Traversal Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Correct Answer: SQL Injection

A SQL query containing unsanitized user input is vulnerable to SQL Injection attacks. Developers should use parameterized queries or prepared statements to avoid this issue.

Question 2

You are reviewing a web application's source code and notice that it stores sensitive data such as usernames, passwords, and personal information without proper encryption. What is the best recommendation to improve data storage security in this scenario?

Hash passwords using a strong, salted hashing algorithm and encrypt other sensitive data. Use a secure VPN to protect communications between clients and the application. Encrypt the entire application code. Store sensitive data on a separate server only accessible by the application.

Correct Answer: Hash passwords using a strong, salted hashing algorithm and encrypt other sensitive data.

The best solution in this scenario is to store passwords using a strong, salted hashing algorithm such as bcrypt, scrypt, or Argon2, and encrypt other sensitive data appropriately using a secure algorithm such as AES. This provides a higher level of security for the stored data, in the case that the data storage is compromised.

Question 3

In a secure code review of a mobile application, it is discovered that an API key is hard-coded into the application code. What should be done instead to protect the API key?

Store the API key securely on the server side and use a secure communication channel for the mobile application to request it. Move the API key to a separate file and exclude it from the application bundle. Use the mobile device's local storage to store the API key. Encrypt the API key in the source code.

Correct Answer: Store the API key securely on the server side and use a secure communication channel for the mobile application to request it.

Hard-coding API keys in the application code is a bad practice. The best approach to protect the API key is to store it securely on the server side and use a secure communication channel (e.g., HTTPS) to request it when needed.

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