How I choose a security research topic
Summary: PortSwigger Director of Research James Kettle describes how he picks security research topics, using his web race conditions work as a case study: after one concept proved unrealistic and a second consumed six weeks before failing, he adapted existing tooling in about a day and found a novel high-impact vulnerability in under a week. He says his main criterion is how much time he must invest before deciding to abandon or continue, and that he deliberately chose race conditions over further HTTP request smuggling work to avoid over-specialisation.
What's compelling: Kettle notes that a talk targeting a single popular CDN could yield ways to take over all its customers' websites, but would offer the audience no actionable take-aways beyond that one vendor - a reminder that research value to defenders depends on whether the findings transfer to their own estates.
Read the original at PortSwigger Research ↗
- Topics
- Vulnerabilities & Patching
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