OWASP Juice Shop Walkthrough: 7 Safe Beginner Challenges

An OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough is a guided vulnerability hunt inside an intentionally insecure training application. For a beginner, the goal is to observe one broken security assumption at a time, reproduce it legally, and understand how a real application should prevent it.

This OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough turns 7 smart first steps into seven safe beginner challenges: finding a hidden route, discovering an exposed document, bypassing two client-side controls, examining poor error handling, testing DOM-based cross-site scripting, and demonstrating broken access control. You will use a browser, its developer tools, and your own isolated target rather than attacking a public service.

If you like practical lab work with explanations that survive after the success notification disappears, you can join my HackersGhost newsletter. I share the useful parts of my experiments, including the moments when the browser was correct and my assumption was wearing the fake moustache.

Everything in this OWASP Juice Shop guide assumes that the application runs on hardware and networks you control. Do not repeat these tests on ordinary shops, public demonstrations, or systems outside an explicit authorization scope. Your first vulnerability hunt should produce notes, not legal correspondence.

Beginner challenge	Security lesson	Main tool
Find the Score Board	Hidden routes are not protected routes	Developer tools
Access a confidential document	Unlinked files can still be public	Browser
Submit zero-star feedback	Disabled buttons are not authorization	Elements panel
Break registration validation	Client state can become stale	Browser form
Trigger unsafe error handling	Errors can disclose internals	Network panel
Perform DOM XSS	Untrusted input can become executable content	Search field
View another basket	Object ownership needs server checks	Session storage

Key Takeaways

• The OWASP Juice Shop scoreboard is feedback, not proof of mastery. A solved badge matters less than your explanation of the failed security control.
• This OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough begins after installation, which keeps it separate from my safe-lab setup article and lets us spend our time on the application.
• Browser developer tools are enough for several early wins. You can learn route discovery, DOM inspection, storage manipulation, and response analysis before adding a crowded toolbox.
• Client-side controls improve the interface, but the server must enforce validation and authorization. A grey button is a design choice, not a security guard.
• The final exercise introduces OWASP Juice Shop broken access control through a basket identifier, turning an abstract category into something you can see and explain.
• Use hints deliberately. Try your own hypothesis first, unlock a hint second, and read the full step only when you can explain what blocked you.
• A good OWASP Juice Shop vulnerability hunt ends with a defensive note: what should the production application validate, encode, restrict, or stop revealing?

Where This OWASP Juice Shop Walkthrough Begins

If you searched what is OWASP Juice Shop, it is a deliberately vulnerable online-store application maintained as an open-source security training project. The OWASP community uses projects like this to make web security concepts practical. Juice Shop includes normal-looking features such as accounts, products, baskets, feedback, APIs, and administration, then intentionally implements many controls badly enough for you to investigate them.

This OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough is not another installation article. My separate guide explains how to build a safe OWASP Juice Shop lab, including VMware isolation, an Ubuntu target, port binding, snapshots, and OWASP Juice Shop Docker. Use it if you still need the OWASP Juice Shop download or network boundary. Return once the shop loads from your attacker VM.

For this OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough, my target runs on Ubuntu while I work mainly from Parrot OS in VMware. My second-hand HP EliteBook has 32 GB of RAM after a 16 GB upgrade. I keep Kali Linux available, but prefer Parrot. The vulnerable side can use my disconnected TP-Link Archer C6 network, physically separate from the modem.

HackersGhost Note: I treat the safe-lab article as the pre-flight checklist and this OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough as the flight. Mixing both search intents would make the articles repetitive and the learning session unnecessarily long.

Prepare Your First OWASP Juice Shop Vulnerability Hunt

Before starting this OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough, browse like a normal customer. Register a fictional account, inspect products, add an item to your basket, open Contact Us, and view your profile menu. Use invented data; a training target does not need your real identity, regular password, or browser sync history.

I keep a dedicated browser profile for lab work and open its developer tools with F12. The useful panels for this OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough are Elements, Sources, Network, Console, and Application or Storage. Browser names differ, but the ideas remain the same.

Use a Three-Pass Method for Every Challenge

1. Observe: Perform the normal action and record the page, request, response, and visible restriction.
2. Hypothesize: Ask which assumption might be wrong. Is a route merely hidden? Is validation only happening in the browser? Does the server verify ownership?
3. Verify: Change one thing, repeat the action, and explain why the result supports or rejects your idea.

For my OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough notes, I use five fields: normal behavior, changed input, observed response, failed assumption, defensive fix. That turns an OWASP Juice Shop challenges list into a reusable method instead of seven colorful notifications with no technical address.

HackersGhost Note: I leave interception off during the first normal action. I want to understand the feature before changing it. A proxy full of unexplained requests is still unexplained, only with more tabs.

Build a Safe OWASP Juice Shop Lab in 7 Proven Steps

Build a Safe OWASP Juice Shop Lab in 7 Proven Steps

OWASP Juice Shop Walkthrough Challenge 1: Find the Score Board

The first OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough challenge reveals the OWASP Juice Shop scoreboard, with its difficulty, hints, and solved status. A route can exist without an obvious link. Hiding navigation reduces discoverability; it does not create authorization.

Try the Route-Discovery Approach

1. Open developer tools and select Sources.
2. Locate the main JavaScript bundle, commonly named main.js, and use the pretty-print control if the code appears as one enormous line.
3. Search inside the file for score. Look for a frontend route rather than treating every match as treasure.
4. Navigate to the route you discovered:

http://YOUR-LAB-IP:3000/#/score-board

When the challenge notification appears, filter the board to beginner difficulty and read several descriptions. Do not immediately open every hint. In this OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough, the scoreboard is your map, while developer tools show how the map was hidden.

OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough defensive lesson: Sensitive functions need server-side authorization on every request. Removing a menu item may improve the interface, but anybody can inspect client code, guess routes, or call an endpoint directly. An unlinked route is a door behind a curtain, not a locked door.

OWASP Juice Shop Walkthrough Challenge 2: Access a Confidential Document

The second OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough challenge teaches content discovery without a scanner. A legal document reveals a directory containing more than the interface advertises. Notice the path structure and test whether the directory itself is browsable.

1. Open About Us and find the link to the terms or legal document.
2. Observe that the URL ends in /ftp/legal.md.
3. Remove the filename and browse to the directory:

http://YOUR-LAB-IP:3000/ftp

4. Inspect the available filenames and open acquisitions.md.

The important observation is not that you guessed a dramatic secret. The application revealed a predictable directory through a legitimate link, then allowed directory listing and public retrieval of a document. This OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough uses the browser alone because the mistake is already visible when you pay attention to the URL.

OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough defensive lesson: Do not place confidential files beneath a public directory. Disable indexing, apply access control, separate private storage from web content, and test direct URLs. Unlinked content can still be guessed, logged, shared, or indexed.

HackersGhost Note: This is why I read paths before launching tools. A URL often explains how developers organized content, and sometimes the application volunteers the next question without needing a wordlist to shout it.

OWASP Juice Shop Walkthrough Challenge 3: Submit Zero-Star Feedback

This OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough challenge uses a Contact Us form that expects a rating. Without stars, Submit remains disabled. That looks like enforcement until you remember that HTML delivered to your browser can be inspected and altered.

1. Open Contact Us, enter a harmless comment, and complete the displayed CAPTCHA.
2. Leave the rating empty and confirm that the Submit button is disabled.
3. Right-click the button, choose Inspect, and locate the disabled attribute.
4. Remove that attribute, then submit the form without selecting a star.

After the success notification, check whether the feedback appears in the application. Your changed DOM did not modify the server; it only allowed the browser to send a request the normal interface tried to prevent. The server then accepted that state. This is the useful part of the OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough.

OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough defensive lesson: Client-side validation gives fast feedback, but the backend must repeat every important rule. Confirm that a rating is present and within range. A disabled button can guide an honest user; it cannot negotiate with modified HTML.

OWASP Juice Shop Walkthrough Challenge 4: Break Registration Validation

This OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough exercise applies the DRY principle: two password fields should remain consistent without contradictory validation logic. You will create a mismatch after the confirmation field accepts the original value.

1. Open the registration page and complete the required fictional account details.
2. Enter the same valid test password in both password fields and wait until the mismatch warning disappears.
3. Return to the first password field and change its value without updating the repeated password.
4. Submit the form and observe whether the stale validation state allows registration.

This OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough step is quieter than XSS, which makes it useful. Real bugs often emerge from event order, stale state, or two components that disagree. Nothing explodes. The form simply believes an old answer after the underlying value changes.

OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough defensive lesson: Revalidate dependent fields whenever either value changes, then enforce the rule on the server. Keep one source of truth for comparison. UI state is temporary evidence, not a trustworthy statement about the final request.

HackersGhost Note: This challenge changed how I test forms. I now vary the order of actions, revisit earlier fields, and ask whether a later change invalidates an earlier decision. Bugs enjoy gaps between events; they are less fond of good state management.

OWASP Juice Shop Walkthrough Challenge 5: Trigger Unsafe Error Handling

This OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough deliberately triggers failure. The security question is what the application reveals. Inconsistent error handling can expose stack details or internal query information instead of a controlled message.

1. Open developer tools and select the Network panel.
2. Request a deliberately invalid REST path on your own target:

http://YOUR-LAB-IP:3000/rest/qwertz

3. Inspect the status code, response body, headers, and any console output.
4. Record which details help a developer but should not be returned to an unauthenticated browser.

Do not stop at “I received a server error.” Look for framework names, file paths, stack frames, database details, or inconsistent formats. In a real assessment, those clues can improve later hypotheses. In this OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough, they teach why production error messages should be useful to the user without becoming the application’s autobiography.

OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough defensive lesson: Return consistent client responses and keep diagnostics in protected server logs. Correlation identifiers help developers investigate without exposing internals. Test errors across pages and API endpoints, not only successful demo paths.

OWASP Juice Shop Walkthrough Challenge 6: Perform DOM XSS

The sixth OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough challenge follows untrusted input from a field into the page. It uses product search and a harmless local alert; it does not steal data, create persistence, or contact another system.

1. Open the product search field on your isolated Juice Shop instance.
2. Enter the official lab payload shown below and press Enter:

<iframe src="javascript:alert('xss')">

3. Confirm that the alert appears, then inspect the resulting DOM and URL state.
4. Write down where the input entered the application and where the browser interpreted it as active content.

The alert is only the visible proof. The important chain is source, transformation, sink, execution. Ask whether the input came from the URL or search state, how the frontend inserted it, and why the browser treated it as markup. That reasoning makes this OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough more useful than collecting a familiar popup.

OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough defensive lesson: Treat user-controlled data as text, use context-aware encoding, avoid unsafe DOM sinks, and add a restrictive Content Security Policy. Validation alone is insufficient because legitimate text can contain unusual characters. The defense depends on the output context.

HackersGhost Note: The popup is not the vulnerability; it is the receipt. The vulnerability is the path that let data become executable content. Keeping that distinction in my notes stops XSS from turning into a collection of decorative payloads.

OWASP Juice Shop Walkthrough Challenge 7: Test Broken Access Control

The final OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough challenge moves from client validation to object ownership. You will create a basket, find its numeric identifier in browser storage, and test whether changing it reveals another basket inside the seeded lab.

1. Sign in with your lab account and add at least one product to your basket.
2. Open developer tools, then select Application or Storage.
3. Inspect Session Storage for the Juice Shop origin and find the numeric bid value.
4. Record your original value, change it by one, and revisit /#/basket. Refresh if the frontend has cached the previous state.
5. Restore your original bid after documenting the result.

This is a clear OWASP Juice Shop broken access control lesson. Knowing or changing an object identifier should not grant access to an object owned by another account. The server already knows who you authenticated as, so it should authorize that identity against the requested basket every time.

If an adjacent identifier does not show a different basket, do not spray requests across the application. Confirm your storage change, refresh, and try another nearby value inside the local seeded instance. The point of this OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough is the authorization decision, not how quickly you can enumerate integers.

OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough defensive lesson: Derive ownership from the server-side session, enforce object authorization for every read and write, and use restrained responses for inaccessible objects. Random identifiers reduce guessing but do not replace authorization. A longer house number does not make the front door self-aware.

Metasploitable 2 Tutorial: How to Practice Ethical Hacking Safely

Metasploitable 2 Tutorial: How to Practice Ethical Hacking Safely

How I Add Burp Without Letting It Take Over the Lesson

You can complete this OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough and its first OWASP Juice Shop challenges with a browser. I then repeat selected actions through Burp Suite on Parrot OS. The PortSwigger homepage is a stable starting point, while my lab browser keeps test certificates, cookies, and fictional credentials away from daily browsing.

For the OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough, I start with interception off, capture one normal request, send it to Repeater, then change one value. I compare feedback states, inspect error responses, and check whether the server associates a basket ID with the authenticated user.

That workflow adds evidence without replacing thought. Burp is excellent at preserving and replaying requests, but it cannot decide what you learned. In my OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough, the browser establishes the behavior and the proxy helps me reproduce it cleanly.

Affiliate note: If you purchase through one of the links below, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

This hands-on book is relevant if you want to continue from browser observation into a more structured Burp Suite workflow.

Where Proton Unlimited Fits Around My Lab

Around this OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough, my vulnerable target stays isolated. For permitted external traffic, my Cudy WR3000 runs ProtonVPN through WireGuard with Secure Core. Privacy-oriented routes involving Switzerland or Iceland add separation for ordinary internet activity, but do not authorize testing or contain a vulnerable VM.

I use Proton Unlimited around the lab because it combines the VPN with encrypted mail, cloud storage, and a password manager. That makes it practical for my normal security workflow while VMware settings and the disconnected TP-Link handle local containment. Clear responsibilities keep a privacy tool useful without asking it to perform network magic it was never hired to do.

Proton Unlimited bundles ProtonVPN, Proton Mail, Proton Drive, and Proton Pass under one subscription. If you already use Proton services around your lab and everyday privacy setup, the complete bundle is usually the more practical choice.

Turn the OWASP Juice Shop Walkthrough Into Real Learning

Use this walkthrough as a defensive record. For each result, describe the expected boundary, what the application accepted, and the server-side control that should close the gap. This keeps the OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough connected to engineering.

• Hidden Score Board: authorize routes and endpoints instead of relying on invisible navigation.
• Confidential document: keep private files outside public web roots and restrict direct access.
• Zero-star feedback: repeat important validation on the backend.
• Registration mismatch: revalidate dependent state and enforce the final rule server-side.
• Unsafe error: separate public messages from protected diagnostics.
• DOM XSS: encode for the output context and avoid unsafe DOM insertion.
• Another basket: verify object ownership on every request.

To extend the OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough, reset the application and repeat two challenges without the steps. If you can predict the request and explain the response, the skill is transferable. If you remember only which number changes a badge, repeat the analysis. The shop can tolerate educational mischief.

HackersGhost Note: My best sessions do not end with the largest solved count. They end when I can close the application, look at my notes, and explain the broken assumption without reopening somebody else’s solution.

Final Thoughts on This OWASP Juice Shop Walkthrough

The OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough for beginners works best as small hypotheses. Find the hidden scoreboard, follow an exposed path, challenge browser-only validation, test state, inspect a controlled error, trace DOM XSS, and finish with object authorization. That is why OWASP Juice Shop for beginners remains practical rather than abstract.

These seven exercises give your first OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough a practical arc without duplicating the installation guide. You begin with what the client reveals and end with what the server fails to enforce. That progression matters because real web testing is rarely one clever payload. It is a chain of observations, restrained changes, and evidence.

The OWASP Juice Shop walkthrough should stay isolated, use fictional data, and restore altered values. Write the defensive lesson beside every success. The notification proves Juice Shop recognized the challenge; your explanation proves you did.

Frequently Asked Questions