This talk explores real-world vulnerabilities and how meaningful security impact is often achieved not through a single flaw, but by chaining multiple weaknesses together. It highlights how organizations continue to repeat the same mistakes—from broken authentication and authorization to exposed secrets and cryptographic material left in source code.

Several “tales” from real-world engagements are presented, including cases where an IIS server was used to uncover hidden applications, exposing administrative panels. Other tales include authentication and authorization flaws leading to PII leakage, IDOR vulnerabilities in large organizations discovered through API analysis, exposed secrets found via static source code analysis, and multiple Account Takeover scenarios where small issues escalated into serious security incidents. The talk also includes cases where analyzing Android APKs led to vulnerabilities in IoT products, revealing undocumented APIs and backend services.