Promoting Security Mindset through Hands-on Exercises for Computer Science Undergraduate Students

Software developers play a crucial role in the security of a system. The lack of security knowledge and skills by professionals who are involved in the design and development of software could lead to serious security consequences. The security mindset concept, which involves thinking about how to break the systems as attackers think, allows developers to gain a deeper understanding of how a vulnerability can be successfully exploited. Computer Science students learning to design and develop software or web applications should also be aware of things that make the system fails. In this paper, we discussed hands-on web security exercises that promote security mindset for computer science undergraduate students that other computer science instructors may find useful.