OWASP Top 10: Unraveling the Mystery Behind It

Quick Summary: OWASP compliance is crucial to ensure the security of software applications. OWASP Top 10 identifies and lists the ten most critical cybersecurity risks. This blog provides a complete understanding of these risks as well as shows the importance of OWASP Top 10 for web application security. Stay tuned for crucial information.

The Open Worldwide Application Security Project or OWASP is a community-driven initiative that is responsible for helping organizations and security experts protect software from cyber threats. It provides information on various software application security issues along with remediation methods to address these challenges.

As a non-profit foundation, OWASP is open to anyone and provides a wide range of open-source resources that include documentation, code, standards, and more. Since they offer free materials that are easy to access, OWASP is a widely used developer reference for application security.

It also provides various reports that highlight security concerns in applications including OWASP Top 10. This report lists ten crucial web application risks. They are the most dangerous vulnerabilities according to OWASP that must be taken care of in developing secure web applications.

In this blog, we will understand what OWASP Top 10 is and the role they play in securing web apps. Let’s dive into the blog for further information.

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What is OWASP Top 10 and Why is It Important?

Now that you know what OWASP is and the role it plays in securing software, let’s now look at the OWASP Top 10. It is a list that ranks the most critical web application security threats. Since OWASP is based on the open community model, the list highlights security risks based on the consensus among worldwide security experts.

The report not just highlights the critical risks, but also recommends organizations to consider them to contain security challenges for web apps. OWASP Top 10 report is regularly updated (latest in 2025) with new risk categories and changes in their rankings. Ranks show the severity level and the frequency of threats. The report seeks to educate and increase awareness among developers, designers, architects, and other experts on the security of web-based applications.

OWASP Top 10 is important because:

• It offers the best practices, tools, standards, and learning guides that contribute to improving the security of applications.
• Highlights the most critical security concerns that help organizations to safeguard their applications more effectively.
• It helps reduce time in testing and security assessment by highlighting critical vulnerabilities.
• Provides insights from security experts worldwide that contribute to this initiative.

What Does OWASP Top 10 Describe?

It provides information about the top ten critical web app risks. The following are the serious security risks to web apps mentioned in the Open Worldwide Application Security Project Top 10 2025 documentation.

1. Broken Access Control

Broken Access Control remains the top risk in the 2025 list, just as it was before. It refers to failures in enforcing proper authorization, allowing users to act beyond their permissions. This vulnerability can lead to sensitive data exposure, privilege escalation, or unauthorized access.

In 2025, notable CWEs include things like SSRF (Server-Side Request Forgery) and CSRF, which highlight how access control failures can be more subtle and deeply embedded. According to OWASP’s data, 100% of applications tested had at least some form of broken access control.

Common Security Misconfiguration vulnerabilities:

• Violating the principle of least privilege (e.g., denying by default isn't enforced)
• Insecure Direct Object References (IDOR) allow users to view or manipulate other users’ data by modifying identifiers
• Bypassing access controls by tampering with URLs, parameters, or API requests (force browsing)
• Elevation of privilege (e.g., acting as a higher-privileged user, or even admin, without proper checks)
• Manipulating metadata; for example, tampering with JWT tokens, cookies, or hidden fields to gain higher access
• Misconfigured CORS, which allows access from untrusted origins

2. Security Misconfiguration

Security Misconfiguration climbed to #2 in 2025, up from #5 in the 2021 list. It happens when systems, applications, or cloud services are set up incorrectly from a security perspective. For example, having default accounts, unnecessary features enabled, or insecure permissions.

Misconfiguration risk is rising because modern software is more configurable than ever, making more room for mistakes. In the OWASP data, 100% of applications tested showed at least one security misconfiguration issue, with a large number of related CWEs, including configuration issues and XML External Entity (XXE) problems.

Common Security Misconfiguration vulnerabilities:

• Default or unchanged accounts and passwords
• Unnecessary features or services enabled (open ports, unused frameworks)
• Verbose error messages revealing stack traces or internal info to users
• Missing or insecure security headers (e.g., missing HTTP security directives)
• Misconfigured cloud permissions or insecure cloud storage (e.g., open S3 buckets)

3. Software Supply Chain Failures

Software Supply Chain Failures is a new risk in the 2025 list (previously part of “Vulnerable and Outdated Components”). It covers breakdowns or compromises in the entire software delivery, including build tools, CI/CD pipelines, and artifact distribution.

Even with limited CVE data, this risk has the highest average incidence rate in OWASP’s testing data (5.19%). Key related CWEs include the use of unmaintained components, reliance on non-updatable dependencies, and dependency on vulnerable third-party modules.

Common Security Misconfiguration vulnerabilities:

• Use of outdated or unmaintained third-party libraries or frameworks
• Transitive dependencies that are not tracked or monitored
• Build pipeline tampering or lack of separation of duties in CI/CD systems
• Downloading components from untrusted sources or unsigned packages
• Poor change management and lack of visibility into the software bill of materials (SBOM)

4. Cryptographic Failures

Cryptographic Failures drops two places to #4 in 2025, down from #2 in earlier lists. This risk covers weaknesses like missing encryption, weak or outdated cryptographic algorithms, predictable random number generation, or improperly protected keys.

It often leads to exposure to sensitive data, both in transit and at rest, because attackers can intercept or crack unprotected data. Some of the most common related CWEs include the use of risky cryptographic algorithms, insufficient entropy for random number generation, and weak pseudo-random number generators.

Common Cryptographic Failures vulnerabilities:

• Use of broken or weak cryptographic algorithms (e.g., old hash functions)
• Insufficient entropy or predictable random number generation
• Poor key management, which includes reusing keys, storing keys insecurely, or hard-coding keys
• Insecure or missing encryption for data in transit (e.g., lack of TLS or weak cipher suites)
• Reuse of nonces or initialization vectors (IVs), or using insecure modes of encryption

5. Injection

Injection falls to #5 in the 2025 list, down from #3. It includes vulnerabilities where attackers insert untrusted data (like SQL, shell, or template code) into interpreters so that it’s executed as commands.

In OWASP’s test data, 100% of applications had some form of injection tested. There risks included in this category are SQL injection, command injection, ORM-based, LDAP, Expression Language, and more. Together, they pose a high-impact threat.

Common Injection vulnerabilities:

• SQL Injection (unsafe string-based query building)
• Command Injection via OS-level calls
• Template Injection in server-side or client-side templating engines
• No proper input validation or sanitization
• Using interpreters or dynamic evaluation on user-controlled input

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6. Insecure Design

Insecure Design drops from #4 in 2021 to #6 in the 2025 list, as other categories like misconfiguration and supply-chain risk rise higher. This category highlights missing threat modeling, poorly defined security controls, and design flaws that create systemic vulnerabilities.

It emphasizes that secure coding alone cannot fix a fundamentally insecure architecture. The 2025 update reinforces the need for secure patterns, stronger design reviews, and early-stage security decisions across web apps, APIs, and cloud-native systems.

Common Insecure Design vulnerabilities:

• Missing or weak threat modeling during architecture planning
• Absence of secure design patterns or reference architectures
• Business logic flaws that enable bypasses or abusive user actions
• Insecure workflow design (e.g., weak multi-step verification)
• Security requirements not defined or poorly integrated into development

7. Authentication Failures

Authentication Failures stays at #7 in 2025 (same as in 2021) but now more accurately reflects 36 different CWEs. This risk arises when an attacker can bypass or compromise the authentication process, for example, by reusing breached credentials, brute forcing, or exploiting weak session management.

It also includes problems like hard-coded passwords, improper certificate validation, session fixation, and failure to invalidate sessions on logout. If authentication isn’t done right, attackers can impersonate users, hijack sessions, or gain unauthorized access.

Common Authentication Failures vulnerabilities:

• Use of default or hard-coded credentials (e.g. “admin/admin”)
• Credential stuffing or brute-force attacks due to weak or breached password reuse
• Missing or weak multi-factor authentication (MFA)
• Session management flaws: session fixation, missing invalidation after logout or inactivity
• Insecure or weak recovery flows (e.g. flawed “forgot password” process)

8. Software or Data Integrity Failures

Software or Data Integrity Failures holds the #8 position in the 2025 list, continuing from earlier versions with a clarified name. This risk centers on trusting code, updates, or data without verifying their integrity, for example, pulling in plugins or modules from untrusted sources, or applying updates without checking digital signatures.

It includes flaws in CI/CD pipelines where build artifacts could be modified, or auto-update mechanisms that do not validate the authenticity of downloaded patches. It also covers insecure deserialization, where untrusted data is accepted and executed, potentially leading to remote code execution.

Common Software or Data Integrity Vulnerabilities:

• Inclusion of functionality from untrusted control spheres (CWE-829)
• Improper modification of dynamically determined object attributes (CWE-915)
• Deserialization of untrusted data (CWE-502)
• Downloading or applying updates or code without integrity checks, such as verifying digital signatures
• Loading libraries or dependencies from untrusted or compromised sources (unsafe CDNs or repositories)

9. Logging & Alerting Failures

Logging & Alerting Failures remains at #9 in the 2025 list, slightly re-named to emphasize the alerting part. It happens when applications don’t properly log the important security events or when those logs aren’t monitored, correlated, or used to trigger alerts.

Without good logging, many attacks go unnoticed; without alerting, even when logs are there, no action might be taken in time. Key related CWEs include CWE-117 (improper output neutralization for logs), CWE-532 (inserting sensitive info into logs), and CWE-778 (insufficient logging).

Common Logging & Alerting Failures Vulnerabilities:

• Failure to log critical events (e.g., failed logins, access control failures)
• Logging too little or vague information (missing context like user ID, IP, timestamps)
• Insecure log storage or logs not protected against unauthorized modification
• No alerting rules or thresholds; suspicious behavior goes unflagged
• Too many false positives in alerts or lack of effective playbooks for incident response

10. Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions

Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions is a new category in the 2025 list. It covers security risks that arise when applications fail to properly manage unexpected runtime conditions such as errors, logical anomalies, or “failing open” in security-critical code.

These exceptional states may come from missing parameter validation, insufficient privilege checks, null pointer dereferences, or other runtime faults. If not handled securely, these conditions can lead to data leaks, privilege escalation, denial-of-service, or inconsistent system state.

Common Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions Vulnerabilities:

• Revealing sensitive internal details in error messages (CWE-209)
• Failing to handle missing parameters or invalid inputs (CWE-234)
• Not correctly detecting or responding to insufficient privileges (CWE-274)
• Null pointer dereferences causing unexpected crashes (CWE-476)

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Final Note

OWASP Top 10 mentions some serious security risks that organizations must check to protect web applications from cyberattacks. There are different types of tools that organizations use to detect OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities. However, the best way to scan your web app for these vulnerabilities is using an automated pentesting tool like ZeroThreat.

ZeroThreat simulates 40,000+ real-world attacks, detecting vulnerabilities with 98.9% accuracy. The tool can significantly reduce your time in manual pen testing, allowing you to focus more on development. You can leverage ZeroThreat without any configuration and detect vulnerabilities, including OWASP Top 10, CWE Top 25, business logic flaws, and more.