CASE STUDY

Dev is a War Zone, Not a Playground

Developers love to treat dev environments like safe zones – but attackers see them as open targets. If your dev setup mirrors production, it’s already on the battlefield.

This blog explores a real incident where Bright’s DAST identified an unauthenticated endpoint inside a national police organisation’s development environment - a flaw that exposed sensitive operational intelligence and could have escalated into a catastrophic national security breach. By catching it early, Bright prevented a scenario with real-world physical and geopolitical consequences.

More importantly, this case reveals a painful truth for modern AppSec teams: if security activities start only once you reach production, you’re already reacting too late. Your security strategy must extend into development - where the attack surface is most vulnerable, least monitored, and commonly misunderstood.