What does a security review of a small codebase actually cover?
In short
- Authentication and session handling, access control, and secrets in code and configuration.
- Each finding ships with reproduction, the fix as a diff, and verification after the change.
- It is code review, not a penetration test: no attacks on running systems, no compliance sign-off.
Three areas, in the order they tend to produce findings.
Access control. Who the application thinks you are, and whether it checks that on every request rather than only at the front door. In practice this means walking every endpoint that accepts an identifier and asking who is allowed to call it.
Authentication and session handling. How sessions are issued, where they are stored, what invalidates them, and whether any route escapes the middleware that is assumed to cover it.
Secrets and configuration. What is in history, what reaches the client bundle, and what sits in example files, fixtures and CI configuration.
What arrives is not a list. Each finding comes with the reproduction that demonstrates it, the fix written against your branch as a diff, and verification that the same reproduction no longer works after the change.
What it is not: a penetration test — this is reading code and configuration, not attacking running systems. Not compliance certification. Not incident response. And not a guarantee; a review finds what it finds, and no one can promise a codebase with nothing left in it.