What You Need to Know About The Top 10 OWASP Vulnerability List

Make sure your organization is secure! Below is the official top 10 OWASP vulnerability list and everything you need to know.

1) Injection

A code injection occurs when an attacker sends invalid data to a web application. One of the most common injection flaws is SQL injection, which occurs when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter while constructing a vulnerable SQL call. To avoid a code injection, make sure to review the source code to limit data exposure and prevent injection attacks.

2) Broken Authentication

Implementation errors like improper implementation of authentication functions and session management often leads to attacks on user identity, keys, password storage, and session tokens. To ensure that you are following website security best practices, be sure to perform external security audits before deploying the code to production.

3) Sensitive Data Exposure

Sensitive data exposure occurs when web applications and APIs fail to protect sensitive data, such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, personal information, or medical information. This can be prevented by identifying sensitive data according to privacy laws and applying controls per classification. Data encryption can be enforced with HSTS – HTTP Strict Transport Security.

4) XML External Entities (XXE)

An attack on XML External Entity occurs when web applications allow untrusted sources to perform XML uploads. Attackers take advantage of these applications on order to obtain internal files. Using fewer complex data formats, such as JSON, and disabling XML external entities can help developers avoid data breaches on sensitive information. Additionally, it is advised to use the SOAP 1.2 (or higher) dependency checker to help secure your projects.

5) Broken Access Control

Under broken access control, an attacker can access user accounts and operate as a user or admin in the system. The attacker can view sensitive files, change access rights, or modify other users’ data. Penetration testing can be used to detect unintended access controls. Additionally, to reduce the ability of an attacker to access your controls, remove unused accounts and apply a multi-factor authentication to all the access points.

6) Security Misconfiguration Errors

Security misconfigurations are among the most common issues that occur in web application development. This OWASP vulnerability is caused by default or incomplete configurations, unused pages, misconfigured HTTP readers, unprotected directories, and open cloud storage. To avoid security misconfiguration on all the applications, operating systems, libraries, and frameworks a security configuration and upgrade should be performed regularly.

7) Cross Site Scripting (XSS)

Cross site scripting is a common vulnerability that is found in about two-thirds of all web applications. It occurs when a web application contains untrusted data on a webpage, which enables attackers to inject client-side scripts into that webpage, steal user sessions, or redirect users to malicious sites. Use the latest frameworks, such as React JS and Ruby on Rails, to apply context-sensitive encoding. Additionally, it is important to modify browser documentation on the client-side to prevent XSS vulnerabilities.

8) Insecure Deserialization

Under the insecure deserialization vulnerability, attackers take advantage of deserialization flaws to remotely execute code into the system and perform various attacks such as injection attacks, replay attacks, and privilege escalation attacks. This compromises the whole application. To protect your application from this vulnerability, do not accept serialized objects from untrusted sources.

9) Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities

Components such as libraries and frameworks have the same privileges as the application itself. These components may contain known vulnerabilities. According to a report by Sucuri, 56% of all CMS applications were not updated in 2019. Attackers and cyber criminals are quick to take advantage of out-of-date software on web application, such as data attacks and server takeover. It is important to remove all the unnecessary application dependencies and use virtual patching.

10) Insufficient Logging and Monitoring

The lack of logging and monitoring of your web application on a regular basis gives the opportunity for attackers to perform compromising activities. Website logging and monitoring should be performed frequently to ensure that it remains secure. In the event, the website is compromised, immediate action can be taken to update the application security. By performing penetration testing and studying the test logs, you can identify vulnerabilities easily, in real-time.