Getting started

Coming soon - I'll be putting together a short course on code review :)

Why code review?

Before we dive into why, it's worth mentioning that this section is related to code review with the intent of finding security vulnerabilities and weaknesses within web applications. Not the typical peer review carried out be development teams. If you're interested in code review in general, this is a good place to start https://about.gitlab.com/topics/version-control/what-is-code-review/. From now on, we'll be looking at code review to support pentesting and security research activities.

There are many benefits to code review, and it's a skill that takes time to build. The main benefits are:

• Easily spot certain vulnerabilities or weaknesses

  • Hardcoded credentials

  • Weak encryption

  • Insecure libraries or dependencies

• Find hidden or complex vulnerabilities

• Find malicious code (e.g. backdoors)

• Achieve compliance