When I first started developing tools for source code auditing, my primary need was to track tainted data flows through complex codebases during manual code reviews. Initially, I turned to Tree-Sitter, which proved excellent for single-file analysis with its fast, incremental parsing capabilities. However, as I scaled to larger codebases with complex cross-file dependencies and data flows, Tree-Sitter’s AST-only approach became limiting. The challenge wasn’t just parsing individual files. It was understanding how data flows between functions, across modules, and through various execution paths during thorough manual security assessments.
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Topics covered
This post explores the evolution from manual code review to automated security testing, covering:
- The reality of manual code review and its limitations
- Understanding vulnerabilities vs weaknesses
- How SAST tools work under the hood
- Taint analysis and data flow tracking
- Sink-to-source vs source-to-sink methodologies
- Mitigation strategies: whitelisting vs blacklisting
- Dealing with false positives in practice
- Choosing and implementing SAST tools at scale
- The complementary relationship between manual and automated testing
It’s 3 AM. You’re on your fifth cup of coffee, eyes bloodshot, staring at line 2,847 of a 10,000-line pull request. Somewhere in this maze of curly braces and semicolons lurks a SQL injection vulnerability that could bring down your entire application. Welcome to the glamorous world of manual code review!
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