conclusion.tex

\chapter{Conclusions}

Throughout this dissertation, we have discussed and analyzed the state
of web security today. I have proposed new approaches that aim to
find vulnerabilities before a malicious attacker has the chance. It is
in this vein of preemptively finding vulnerabilities that I believe
will have the greatest return-on-investment. By finding
vulnerabilities early on in the development process, the
vulnerabilities will be easier and cheaper to fix. 

In this spirit, for moving forward I see the web security community
moving to approaches that create web applications that are secure by
construction. Therefore, vulnerabilities can be prevented, just by
designing an application in a certain way, or perhaps by creating a
new language or framework that is easy to statically analyze. As shown
throughout this dissertation, web application vulnerabilities are
incredibly prevalent, and show no signs of stopping. In order to
counteract this trend, we require novel ideas: new ways of designing
applications, new tools to automatically find security
vulnerabilities, or new approaches to web applications. The web is too
important to wait---we must take responsibly for securing this popular
platform.