AppSec California 2017

A web application’s attack surface is the combination of URLs it will respond to as well as the
inputs to those URLs that can change the behavior of the application. Understanding an
application’s attack surface is critical to being able to provide sufficient security test coverage,
and by watching an application’s attack surface change over time security and development
teams can help target and optimize testing activities. This presentation looks at methods of
calculating web application attack surface and tracking the evolution of attack surface over
time. In addition, it looks at metrics and thresholds that can be used to craft policies for
integrating different testing activities into Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
pipelines for teams integrating security into their DevOps practices.