Nanne Baars
WebGoat Project Lead
Veenendaal, Utrecht, Netherlands
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolNanne Baars is a seasoned Java backend engineer and security expert with 11+ years of experience building cloud-native platforms and developer tooling. As WebGoat project lead at OWASP he teaches web application security through hands-on, deliberately insecure lessons and has implemented core challenges and infrastructure fixes used by the global security community. Currently supporting platform teams at Yolt via Xebia, he blends production-grade Spring Boot, Kubernetes and CI/CD expertise with practical secrets management and cryptography libraries. His contributions span full-stack and DevOps work—modernizing vulnerable-sample apps, adding automated tests and smoothing container/k8s deployments—so he understands both how vulnerabilities arise and how to remediate them in real systems. Trained in theoretical computer science, he pairs academic rigor with a practitioner’s knack for turning subtle security concepts into teachable, deployable solutions.
12 years of coding experience
19 years of employment as a software developer
CourseraMaster’s Degree, Theoretical Computer Science, Master of Science (MSc), Master’s Degree, Theoretical Computer Science, Master of Science (MSc) at Radboud University Nijmegen
English, Dutch
Github Skills (25)
kubernetes10
web-application10
web-application-security10
web-token10
it-security10
java10
security10
javas10
owasp10
jsonwebtoken10
kubernetes-pods10
jwt10
spring-boot10
devops10
testing9
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
WebGoat/WebGoat
Apr 2015 - Jan 2023
WebGoat is a deliberately insecure application
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Security Engineer
Back-end Developer & Security EngineerContributions:29 reviews, 1060 commits, 673 PRs in 7 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Nanne's commits primarily focus on enhancing the security and functionality of a web application, specifically OWASP WebGoat, a deliberately insecure application for learning web security. The contributions include fixing classloading issues within the plugin architecture, improving error logging, and implementing new features like the ability to reset a password. They also implemented the initial structure for a new SQL injection challenge, demonstrating an understanding of web application vulnerabilities and remediation strategies.
webgoat
WebGoat/WebGoat-Legacy
Sep 2014 - Jul 2015
Legacy WebGoat 6.0 - Deliberately insecure JavaEE application
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:74 commits, 13 PRs, 1 push in 10 months
Contributions summary:Nanne primarily focused on modifying the existing code base to enhance the functionality and fix issues within the WebGoat application. Their contributions include changing the layout and styling of lessons, adding a service to fetch lesson titles, and correcting errors in the application's core logic. The user also created a new lesson on password strength and updated the solution pages.
javaeewebgoat
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