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Software Security Textbook

A free, self-paced textbook in 6 chapters. Read a chapter, then drill it with the 50 companion flashcards using spaced repetition.

6 chapters · 50 cards · Updated

Chapters

  1. 1The OWASP Top 10 and Web Application Threats

    The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) publishes a regularly updated list of the ten most critical web application security risks, and the 2021 edition includes br...

  2. 2Cryptography: Securing Data in Transit and at Rest

    Secure communication over the web depends on Transport Layer Security (TLS), the protocol underlying HTTPS. During the TLS handshake, the client proposes supported cipher suites, t...

  3. 3Authentication, Authorization, and Identity Protocols

    Authentication and authorization are often conflated, but they answer fundamentally different questions. Authentication verifies who you are, typically through something you know (...

  4. 4Browser Security Mechanisms and HTTP Headers

    Browsers enforce a powerful default protection called the Same-Origin Policy, which prevents scripts loaded from one origin from reading resources served by a different origin. Two...

  5. 5Session Management, Secrets, and Rate Limiting

    Sessions, secrets, and rate limits form the operational backbone of a secure application. Secure session management begins with generating session identifiers using a cryptographic...

  6. 6Security Principles and Defensive Design

    Beyond any single technology, robust software security rests on a small number of enduring design principles. The principle of least privilege holds that every user, program, and p...

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