PortSwigger Web Security Academy Part 1
Signing up
In this series of blog posts, I’m going to walk through the PortSwigger Academy at each step. In this series, I’ll post a blog per lesson and in today's post, I’ll be going through the signup process.
Who is PortSwigger?
PortSwigger is a security company, best known for creating and providing Burp Suite, which is used by thousands of security professionals. Here is a snippet from Google about PortSwigger:
“PortSwigger is a global leader in cybersecurity. We provide solutions that bring productivity, agility, reliability, and excellence to your web application security strategy. Our products and research help tens of thousands of users worldwide find and remediate vulnerabilities to keep your applications up and running. No matter where you are in your security maturity journey, PortSwigger is here to help you secure the web.”
More can be found out on their about page: About us — PortSwigger
Why have I chosen their academy?
There are thousands of resources to get started with web application testing, however, PortSwigger is often cited in the recommended lists, plus best of all it’s completely free!
Why am I doing the Web Security Academy?
Part of my job is to do web application testing and whilst I have a diploma in software development, one thing they teach you extraordinarily little about as a software developer is the common web vulnerabilities.
My goal with the academy is to:
- Gain a better understanding of the web application vulnerabilities out there and how they work.
- Understand how to manually test for vulnerabilities rather than relying on automated tools.
- Be able to take that knowledge and apply it to the web application testing we do at work.
Enough waffle, let's start the sign-up process…
How to create an account
To create an account, we first need to head over to https://portswigger.net/web-security where you’ll be presented with a page like this:
From this page, we need to click on the button that says, “Sign up”. You’ll then be asked to enter the Email address you want to sign up with. Once entered click on the “Register” button.
You’ll then see a message that says:
Thank you. Please check your emails for instructions on how to complete your registration.
If you check your mailbox, you will see an email that looks like the below that has come from licensing@portswigger.net
If you click on the link “Click here” this will open your browser and you will be asked your name.
Once you have entered your name you will be told that registration is complete and your password. It will also tell you to save this in your password manager, if you’re not using one, then this is a suitable time to start.
Once you’ve saved your login details, click on “Login” in the top right-hand corner, where you will then be asked for the email address you signed up with and the password that you just received.
That’s it you’ve created your account.
What’s next
Keep an eye out for my next post in the series which will talk through the first lesson. If you want to jump ahead, I’d recommend checking out the learning path PortSwigger have set out here: Learning path | Web Security Academy — PortSwigger
