Welcome to the second course in the OWASP Top 10 series! 🔐 In this course, we’ll explore cryptographic failures, one of the most critical security risks in modern applications. Cryptographic failures occur when sensitive data is not properly encrypted, leading to unauthorized access, data breaches, and compliance violations.

In the previous course, you secured the pastebin application against Broken Access Control vulnerabilities. Now, we shift our focus to another major attack vector: poor cryptographic practices that expose sensitive data. While encryption is meant to protect confidential information, improper implementation can render it useless—or worse, provide attackers with a false sense of security.

Applications often handle sensitive information such as passwords, credit card details, personal data, and API keys. If this data is not properly encrypted, attackers can intercept, manipulate, or extract it, leading to severe consequences.

Common causes of cryptographic failures include:

• Hardcoded secrets in source code, making them easy to extract if the code is leaked.
• Weak encryption algorithms that can be cracked with modern computing power.
• Improper password hashing, allowing attackers to brute-force credentials.

These failures don’t just result in data leaks—they break user trust, violate privacy laws (e.g., GDPR, PCI DSS), and expose organizations to legal and financial penalties. A single cryptographic mistake can compromise an entire system.

In this course, you’ll work with the pastebin application to identify and fix cryptographic weaknesses. You will:

• Eliminate hardcoded secrets to prevent credential leaks.
• Use strong encryption for sensitive data at rest and in transit.
• Implement secure password storage using key derivation functions.

By the end of this course, you’ll have a solid understanding of cryptographic best practices and how to apply them in real-world applications.

In the next unit, we’ll tackle hardcoded secrets, a common yet dangerous mistake where encryption keys, passwords, and API tokens are stored in plain text within the codebase. You’ll see how attackers exploit this flaw and how to securely manage secrets using environment variables and secret management tools.

Let’s strengthen the cryptographic security of our application and ensure sensitive data stays protected! 🚀