A successful strategy in appsec is to build platforms with defaults and designs that ease the burden of security choices for developers. But there's an important difference between expecting (or requiring!) developers to use a platform and building a platform that developers embrace. Julia Knecht shares her experience in building platforms with an attention to developer needs, developer experience, and security requirements. She brings attention to the product management skills and feedback loops that make paved roads successful -- as well as the areas where developers may still need or choose their own alternatives. After all, the impact of a paved road isn't in its creation, it's in its adoption.

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Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-341

AI is more than LLMs. Machine learning algorithms have been part of infosec solutions for a long time. For appsec practitioners, a key concern is always going to be how to evaluate the security of software or a system. In some cases, it doesn't matter if a human or an LLM generated code -- the code needs to be reviewed for common flaws and design problems. But the creation of MCP servers and LLM-based agents is also adding a concern about what an unattended or autonomous piece of software is doing.

Sohrob Kazerounian gives us context on how LLMs are designed, what to expect from them, and where they pose risk and reward to modern software engineering.

Resources

• https://www.vectra.ai/research

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Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-340

What are some appsec basics? There's no monolithic appsec role. Broadly speaking, appsec tends to branch into engineering or compliance paths, each with different areas of focus despite having shared vocabularies and the (hopefully!) shared goal of protecting software, data, and users.

The better question is, "What do you want to secure?"

We discuss the Cybersecurity Skills Framework put together by the OpenSSF and the Linux Foundation and how you might prepare for one of its job families. The important basics aren't about memorizing lists or technical details, but demonstrating experience in working with technologies, understanding how they can fail, and being able to express concerns, recommendations, and curiosity about their security properties.

Resources:

• https://cybersecurityframework.io
• https://owasp.org/www-project-cheat-sheets/
• https://blog.cloudflare.com/rfc-8446-aka-tls-1-3/
• https://aflplus.plus/
• https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/

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Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-339

Appsec still deals with ancient vulns like SQL injection and XSS. And now LLMs are generating code along side humans. Sandy Carielli and Janet Worthington join us once again to discuss what all this new code means for appsec practices. On a positive note, the prevalence of those ancient vulns seems to be diminishing, but the rising use of LLMs is expanding a new (but not very different) attack surface. We look at where orgs are investing in appsec, who appsec teams are collaborating with, and whether we need security awareness training for LLMs.

Resources:

• https://www.forrester.com/blogs/application-security-2025-yes-ai-just-made-it-harder-to-do-this-right/

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Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-338

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.

Segment Resources:

• https://pentesterlab.com/live-training/
• https://pentesterlab.com/appsecschool
• https://deepwiki.com
• https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2025/05/29/decomplexification/

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Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-337

Fuzzing has been one of the most successful ways to improve software quality. And it demonstrates how improving software quality improves security. Artur Cygan shares his experience in building and applying fuzzers to barcode scanners, smart contracts, and just about any code you can imagine. We go through the useful relationship between unit tests and fuzzing coverage, nudging fuzzers into deeper code paths, and how LLMs can help guide a fuzzer into using better inputs for its testing.

Resources

• https://blog.trailofbits.com/2024/10/31/fuzzing-between-the-lines-in-popular-barcode-software/
• https://github.com/crytic/echidna
• https://github.com/crytic/medusa
• https://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2014/11/pulling-jpegs-out-of-thin-air.html

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Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-336

What makes a threat modeling process effective? Do you need a long list of threat actors? Do you need a long list of terms? What about a short list like STRIDE? Has an effective process ever come out of a list? Farshad Abasi joins our discussion as we explain why the answer to most of those questions is No and describe the kinds of approaches that are more conducive to useful threat models.

Resources:

• https://www.eurekadevsecops.com/agile-devops-and-the-threat-modeling-disconnect-bridging-the-gap-with-developer-insights/
• https://www.threatmodelingmanifesto.org
• https://kellyshortridge.com/blog/posts/security-decision-trees-with-graphviz/

In the news, learning from outage postmortems, an EchoLeak image speaks a 1,000 words from Microsoft 365 Copilot, TokenBreak attack targets tokenizing techniques, Google's layered strategy against prompt injection looks like a lot like defending against XSS, learning about code security from CodeAuditor CTF, and more!

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Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-335

CISA has been championing Secure by Design principles. Many of the principles are universal, like adopting MFA and having opinionated defaults that reduce the need for hardening guides. Matthew Rogers talks about how the approach to Secure by Design has to be tailored for Operational Technology (OT) systems. These systems have strict requirements on safety and many of them rely on protocols that are four (or more!) decades old. He explains how the considerations in this space go far beyond just memory safety concerns.

Segment Resources:

• https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2025-01/joint-guide-secure-by-demand-priority-considerations-for-ot-owners-and-operators-508c_0.pdf
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHSXu1P4ZTo

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Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-334