Lion Cipher Lab
Set up DVWA to practice safely
- AppSec / DevSecOps
- Beginner
- ~30 min
- Free · no account required
Why it matters
DVWA (Damn Vulnerable Web Application) is one of the oldest and most widely referenced practice targets in web security. It is a PHP and MySQL web app that was written on purpose to be full of vulnerabilities, so that people learning web attacks and defenses have a legal, controllable place to work. Deliberately vulnerable apps exist for exactly this reason: you cannot lawfully practice on a website you don't own, so the community publishes broken-by-design apps you run yourself. Getting DVWA running once, on your own machine, bound to localhost, gives you a safe, disposable target you are…
What you'll learn
- running a deliberately vulnerable app safely
- binding a container to localhost only
- initializing DVWA's database
- setting DVWA's security level
- safe home web-app lab discipline
Steps in this lab
- The one rule, before anything downloads
- What DVWA is, in one breath
- Confirm your lab engine is ready
- Pull and run DVWA, bound to localhost
- Create the database and log in
- Set the security level
- The golden rules — and running it hands-off
- What you just built — and where it goes next