Run 01 · Damn Vulnerable Web Application · PHP · GPL-3.0-or-later
Verdict: Buy conditionally
DVWA
A host that is supposed to stay broken. The only way to prove the method does not lie about security.
Host repository: github.com/digininja/DVWA ↗ — read it yourself; we did not touch a line of it.
In 60 seconds
DVWA ships 57 module-level combinations that must remain exploitable — it is a teaching tool. A library that 'fixes' it destroys it. The run refused the easy claim: it did not certify anything secure, kept every lesson intact, and instead designed a defended comparison lane beside the vulnerable one, plus a rule that a real-world finding cannot be called closed until adversarial regression and an independent retest both pass.
- Engineered rows screened
- 1,116 / 1,116
- Discovery rows screened
- 6,479 / 6,479
- Dedicated cyber pass
- 301 / 301
- Host lines changed
- 0
What the Evaluation Library got right
- Read the host first and recognised the vulnerabilities as the product, not as defects to remove.
- Stated its own ceiling in the opening paragraph: one pass cannot truthfully certify a real website secure.
- Screened all 1,116 engineered rows and all 6,479 Discovery rows, plus a dedicated 301-row cyber pass, and rejected most of them.
- Changed zero host lines — the licence gate held at EVALUATE ONLY because no purchase record was supplied.
What was new about this run
- The strongest output was a Remediation Closure Gate: refuse to mark a finding closed merely because code changed.
- A vulnerability-preserving defensive twin is a capability neither side had alone — the host's lessons plus the library's evidence lane.
- DVWA's own deployment warnings became executable assertions without breaking classroom mode.
Composites designed for this host
- Vulnerability-Preserving Defensive Twin
- Security Regression Matrix
- Remediation Closure Gate
- Exploit-to-Evidence Replay Capsule
- Safe-Lab Exposure Lock
Read the full DVWA report+
Open in a new tab · Download the sealed HTML · 97 KB · prints to PDF · no network calls