owasp/cheatsheetseries

This repository is the official source for the OWASP Cheat Sheet Series, a large collection of security guidance documents aimed at developers who are building web applications and want to avoid common security mistakes. OWASP stands for the Open Worldwide Application Security Project, a well-known non-profit organization dedicated to improving software security. The problem it solves is that security is a broad and complex topic, and developers often struggle to find concise, practical advice on specific issues, things like how to safely handle passwords, prevent SQL injection attacks, set up secure authentication, or protect against cross-site scripting (a type of attack where malicious code is injected into web pages). Instead of reading entire books or lengthy documentation, developers can look up a cheat sheet for the specific topic they need and get a focused, high-quality summary of best practices. The content itself is written as Markdown files (a simple text formatting language) and published to a website generated by a Python-based build tool. There is no executable application here, the Python code mainly handles generating the static website from the source files. Developers can also build the site locally to browse all the cheat sheets offline. You would turn to this repository when you are a developer, security engineer, or student who wants quick, trusted, peer-reviewed guidance on application security topics. It is particularly useful during code review, threat modeling, or when implementing a new feature that touches security-sensitive areas. The tech stack consists of Markdown source files, a Python-based static site generator, and optional Docker support for local builds.