In today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape, ensuring robust security is more than a checklist—it’s a collaborative journey. At Least Authority, our process begins by working closely with our client to define the audit scope and secure the essential documentation and resources. Through in-depth technical discussions, we pinpoint key concerns and craft a timeline that outlines the review duration and sets an expected delivery date for the Initial Audit Report—adjusting as necessary should team availability or project readiness require it. Building on this foundation, we embark on a discovery phase that starts with a kickoff meeting to align on project details, schedules, and communication channels.
Following the completion of our comprehensive review and the delivery of the Initial Audit Report, we provide support to the client development teams as they address our findings. Once our client confirms that their code is ready for verification, we transition to the verification and final reporting stages. We establish a date for the Final Audit Report, verify the implemented fixes, and update our findings accordingly. We advocate releasing the final report publicly to enhance transparency and facilitate knowledge sharing, though publication occurs only with resolution of critical issues and upon mutual consent. Additionally, we provide up to 90 days of incident response support to address any further issues that emerge after the audit. The following section outlines the methodology we use in our security audit process.
Audit Review Methodology
We like to work with a transparent process and make our reviews a collaborative effort. Our security audits aim to enhance system quality and ensure sufficient remediation to help protect users.
Manual Code Review
During our manual code review, we identify potential issues in logic, error handling, protocol parsing, and cryptography misuse. We also seek opportunities to enhance defensive programming to mitigate future errors and expedite subsequent audits. While focusing on in-scope code, we examine relevant dependencies as necessary.
Vulnerability Analysis
Our audit techniques include manual code analysis, user interface interaction, and whitebox penetration testing, supplemented by various tools, including AI, to support the code review process. We install and use the software to explore user interactions and roles, brainstorming threat models and attack surfaces. We review design documentation, examine source code dependencies, and skim open issue tickets. We hypothesize potential vulnerabilities and follow a structured investigation and remediation process for each identified issue.
Documenting Results
We follow a conservative, transparent process for analyzing potential security vulnerabilities. Upon identifying a potential issue, we promptly document it in the Initial Audit Report, even before verifying its feasibility and impact. This approach ensures early recording of all suspicions, even if they later prove non-exploitable. We then confirm the issue through code analysis, live experimentation, or automated tests. Subsequently, we analyze the feasibility of an attack in a live system.
Suggested Solutions
We identify immediate mitigations for live deployments and recommend remediation requirements for future releases. Recognizing that successful mitigation and remediation is an ongoing collaborative process, we advise developers and deployment engineers to scrutinize these recommendations after our report is delivered, and before the details are made public.
Verification
If issues outlined in the Initial Audit Report remain unaddressed or verification requests go unanswered, we will perform an automatic verification and deliver the Final Audit Report 45 days after the Initial Audit Report delivery, noting that all the issues remain unresolved.
Publication
After verification and delivery of the Final Audit Report, the report may be publicly released at our client’s discretion. If published, we will consider it public information and may discuss it openly, including posting the Final Audit Report on our website.
Secure Your Project Today
For more information on how our comprehensive audit process can secure your digital assets, contact us today to discuss your specific needs and explore tailored solutions.