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OWASP Top 10: Unraveling the Mystery Behind It

Updated Date: Aug 29, 2024
Introduction to OWASP Top 10 Vulnerabilities

Quick Summary: OWASP compliance is crucial to ensure 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.

Table of Contents
  1. What is OWASP Top 10 and Why is It Important?
  2. What Does OWASP Top 10 Describe?
  3. Final Note

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 with new kinds of risks along with 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 ten critical web app risks. The following are the serious risks to web apps mentioned in the Open Worldwide Application Security Project Top 10 documentation.

List of OWASP Top 10 Vulnerabilities

1. Broken Access Control

It is a kind of vulnerability that provides an attacker unauthorized access to user accounts. The attacker can act like a user or administrator after gaining access. It is the predominant type of vulnerability tested in 94% of applications. Broken Access Control was in 5th position earlier and now it has gone up to 1st position in the OWASP Top 10 risk list.

Common Broken Access Control vulnerabilities:

  • Violation of the least privilege principle.
  • Direct object references
  • Missing access controls for APIs.
  • Metadata manipulation.
  • CORS misconfiguration.

2. Cryptographic Failures

It focuses on securing data at rest and when transmitting via the web or any other protocol. Earlier known as Sensitive Data Exposure, Cryptographic Failures raise the concern of data exposure. Attackers can reach your sensitive data such as financial information, if web apps fail to protect them. When the data is compromised, it is known as a cryptographic failure. Encryption can be used to minimize the risks of data exposure.

Common Cryptographic Failures vulnerabilities:

  • Data is transmitted in clear text.
  • Use of weak or outdated cryptographic algorithms.
  • Key management is not done properly.
  • Encryption is not in use.
  • A deprecated hash function is used like SHA-1.

3. Injection

Injection attacks occur when an attacker supplies invalid data to a web application via form inputs to force it to do what it was not designed to do. For example, an attacker could enter a certain SQL command into the form field to force it to execute the command and cause an SQL injection attack. As a result, the attacker will have access to the database where there is no protection against injection attacks. Cross-site Scripting (XSS) is also now part of injection vulnerabilities.

Common Injection vulnerabilities:

  • Web apps don’t sanitize, filter, or validate data provided by users.
  • Parameters for SQL queries as well as escape characters not used.
  • Hostile data is used within ORM.
  • Web applications are directly using or concatenating hostile data.

4. Insecure Design

This is a new addition to the OWASP Top 10 list. This category of vulnerabilities includes weaknesses in web app architecture and design flaws. It differs from ‘insecure implementation’ that results from implementation defects. It is possible that while the design is secure, implementation defects can cause vulnerabilities.

Common Insecure Design vulnerabilities:

  • Lack of business risk profiling.
  • Ineffective security and privacy-related controls.
  • Insecure design patterns.
  • Resource consumption is not distributed aptly.

5. Security Misconfiguration

It is among the common vulnerabilities in web applications. As per OWASP testing reports, 90% of web apps have some kind of misconfiguration vulnerability. This type of vulnerability occurs when web applications are using default configurations, or they show very verbose errors. For example, a web app could show descriptive error messages to users that can reveal weaknesses. Ensuring more general error messages can help to reduce the risk.

Common Security Misconfiguration vulnerabilities:

  • Improperly configured permissions or missing appropriate security measures.
  • Unnecessary features like ports, accounts, pages, and privileges, are enabled.
  • Still using default accounts and passwords without changes.
  • Error handling reveals excessive information.
  • The server is not sending security headers/directives.

6. Vulnerable and Outdated Components

The use of various components like frameworks and libraries is common in developing web applications. They help reduce the workload by removing redundant tasks. An example is using the React library for front-end development. Attacks often look for vulnerabilities in these components. Not updating these components with fresh security patches and updates is a common vulnerability.

Common Vulnerable and Outdated Components vulnerabilities:

  • Lacking version information of components.
  • Using unsupported, out-of-date, or vulnerable components.
  • Lacking regular security scans and updates.
  • Not updating the framework, dependency, or other components timely.
  • Developers don’t test the compatibility of updated or patched components.
  • Component configurations are not secured.

7. Identification and Authentication Failures

It was earlier a part of the Broken Authentication category. This type of vulnerability includes weaknesses related to session management and user authentication. It involves improper implementation of user authentication that enables an attacker to compromise user credentials. The attacker steals the user’s identity.

Common Identification and Authentication vulnerabilities:

  • Susceptible to brute force and other automated attacks.
  • Allows default passwords like “admin”.
  • Use of a weak password recovery mechanism.
  • Use of weakly hashed or plain text passwords.
  • Missing multifactor authentication.
  • Sessions IDs are not invalidated correctly.

8. Software and Data Integrity Failures

It is also a new addition to the OWASP Top 10. This vulnerability occurs due to critical data, software updates, and the use of CI/CD pipeline without verifying integrity. As per this OWASP Top 10 security entry, unsecured data deserialization is a flaw that attackers can exploit. It can result in DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.

Common Software and Data Integrity Failures vulnerabilities:

  • Applications using plugins, libraries, or modules from untrusted sources.
  • Insecure CI/CD pipeline that offers unauthorized access.
  • Auto-updates with integrity verification can be an issue.

9. Security Logging and Monitoring Failures

Earlier it was known to be insufficient logging and monitoring. This category of web application vulnerability now includes several other types of failures. The risk of logging and monitoring failures occurs when regular monitoring and logging is not done. Failing to monitor and log web application behavior leaves scope for vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit to hack it.

Common Security Logging and Monitoring Failures vulnerabilities:

  • Information like failed logins, high-value transactions, logins, etc not logged.
  • Lack of effective alerting threshold and response process.
  • Unclear or no log messages for errors and warnings.
  • The application fails to detect or alert attacks in real-time.

10. Server-side Request Forgery

SSRF, which is an acronym for Server-side Request Forgery is also a new category added to the OWASP Top 10 list. SSRF attack occurs when a web app fetches web resources without prior validation of the URL provided by the user. This will enable an attacker to craft a forged request and force the web application to send this request to an unspecified location. Even if the system is protected with firewalls and VPNs the attacker can make this request. It results in an SSRF or Server-side Request Forgery attack.

Common security Server-side Request Forgery:

  • This is a vulnerability that occurs when a web application fetches web resources before the URL supplied by a user are validated.

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 a reliable DAST tool like ZeroThreat.

ZeroThreat is the world’s most intelligent DAST scanner with tons of features and benefits. It offers a high level of accuracy that significantly reduces your time in manual pen testing. The tool has a high-precision scanning engine based on artificial intelligence. You can leverage this tool without any configuration and detect common vulnerabilities including OWASP Top.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does OWASP stand for?

OWASP stands for Open Web Application Security Project.

Is OWASP top 10 still relevant?

What is the difference between NIST and OWASP?

Is OWASP only for web applications?

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