I Scanned 20 Nigerian Developer Projects for Security Vulnerabilities, Here's What I Found
Before I wrote a single line of product code, I did something most founders skip entirely. I talked to 16 developers. Then I scanned their projects. What I found changed how I think about security in the Nigerian tech ecosystem and probably the African tech ecosystem more broadly. The Setup I'm building DeadZone, an AI-powered vulnerability scanner for developers who aren't security experts. The…
I scanned 20 projects by Nigerian developers for security vulnerabilities. Here is what I found:
1. Almost none of the projects had a Content Security Policy (CSP) header. This means the site has no instruction for browsers on what content can load. An attacker could exploit this to inject malicious scripts leading to data theft or redirection.
2. Several projects had their WordPress admin panel publicly accessible with no protection. This allowed brute force attacks to gain unauthorized access, especially with leaked username-password combinations.
3. Some applications had debug consoles left exposed in production. Attackers could view database queries, environment variables, file structures and potentially execute arbitrary code.
4. Session cookies were missing critical security flags like HttpOnly, Secure, and SameSite. This exposed session tokens to XSS attacks, enabling attackers to hijack user sessions.
5. No projects had rate limiting in place. This allowed attacks like credential stuffing, API abuse, brute force attacks, and more. Developers I spoke to said they care about security but lack the tools to implement it effectively.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
