OWASP Top 10: The Most Common Security Vulnerabilities

Cybercriminals are constantly waiting for opportunities to exploit your organization's system security flaws. While the motivations of these hackers vary, be it political, financial, or just to gain notoriety, they all constitute a severe threat to your company's confidential data. There are several points of entry known as security vulnerabilities that are defined by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) community.

Awareness about these vulnerabilities that could put your network at risk, and then plugging those holes before an attacker can breach them, is an important part of protecting your business against modern cyber threats. In this article, we will list the top ten most common security vulnerabilities for 2021-22 as defined by the OWASP's last released publication.

Major Causes Of Security Vulnerabilities

As per Statista, 2023 saw the highest number of common security vulnerabilities discovered worldwide, at 29,065. This is an indication of how increased acceptance and implementation of remote work is leading to an increase in cybercriminals finding new ways to breach organizational networks.

Source: Statista

Experts on the other side of these breaches, those that are attempting to find protective measures against them, do so by categorizing the type of vulnerability as it is discovered. The causes of cyber security vulnerabilities are defined as follows:

1)Network Susceptibility:

A network vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or internal practices that can lead to a security breach if it is exploited by an attacker. If an operating system isn't updated with the current security patches, it could be vulnerable to network intrusions. A virus could infect the OS, the host it's on, and potentially the entire network if it isn't patched.

2)Operating System Defects:

Operating system vulnerabilities are defects in an operating system that allow attackers to disrupt any device over which the OS is installed. A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is an example of an attack that exploits OS flaws by overloading a system with fraudulent requests, prompting it to become saturated. Because the machine running the application is accessible, unpatched and outdated software introduces OS vulnerabilities, potentially putting the entire network at risk.

3)Human Error:

Human workers represent the weakest link in many cybersecurity frameworks. Errors as simple as leaving a password written on a piece of paper can readily expose sensitive data, providing attackers with exploitable access points. Other issues could be a manual overload of the server by overuse or overabundant use of access points that can cause systems to malfunction.

4)Process Issues:

Certain enterprise-level processes that have been monitored with caution can lead to major security vulnerabilities. These processes need to be stress-tested and taken through due diligence to qualify as compliant before they are established as organizationally fit. With mismanaged processes, attackers have plenty of ways into the organization's mainframe.

Most Common Security Vulnerabilities As Per OWASP

OWASP is a web community that was established as a non-profit organization that constantly strives to maintain the security of software products, devices, and frameworks. They conduct online chats and projects where individual contributors can provide their two cents on cyber security. According to several expert opinions accumulated by OWASP, the 10 most common security breaches happen from the following vulnerabilities:

1)Broken Access Control

Broken access control refers to a scenario wherein attackers can obtain access to, change, remove, or perform a set of functions that are not authorized by the application, framework, or system. The access control is considered broken when regular users can gain access to admin-only authorizations through alterations done on parameters in a URL. This can be done through visualization maneuvers or exploiting an authorized user's sensitive data, or through the application of privilege escalation.

Examples of broken access control are unauthorized access to resources, privilege escalation, direct object references, and insecure direct object references (IDOR).

How to prevent Broken Access Control:

• Ensure consistent application of access controls across all components.
• Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) or Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC).
• Employ proper session management techniques.
• Encrypt sensitive data at rest and in transit.
• Apply the principle of least privilege.
• Monitor and log access control events.
• Conduct thorough security testing, including code reviews.
• Keep software dependencies updated to patch known vulnerabilities.

2)Cryptographic Failure

The OWASP claims that cryptographic failure is one of the primary causes and one of the most recognizable symptoms that show that sensitive data has been exposed to a cybercriminal. This is often started by incorrectly using cryptography like in case Initialization Vectors (IV) are reused, leaking information about the plaintext's first block and the most common prefixes to it. Managing keys badly could also lead to operational cryptographic failures through channel leaks, or inference data being transported to the unauthorized person.

How to prevent cryptographic failure:

• Use reputable cryptographic libraries and algorithms.
• Implement protocols and algorithms correctly.
• Keep cryptographic libraries and dependencies updated.
• Generate keys securely using a reliable random number generator.
• Store keys securely, utilizing key management systems or HSMs.
• Employ appropriate key lengths and parameters.
• Implement secure key exchange protocols.
• Protect against side-channel attacks.
• Use secure protocols and configurations.
• Regularly audit cryptographic implementations.
• Educate developers and administrators on secure practices.
• Monitor cryptographic operations and log relevant events.

3)Injections

Based on whether the web application accepts user input, injection vulnerabilities enable a user to gain access to the backend database, shell command, or operating system call. Potential attackers can read, generate, edit, and remove data by concatenating more information to these input boxes. They may be able to attach full scripts to apps and hence execute commands as a result. According to the market research, 94% of the applications were tested for some form of injection with a max incidence rate of 19%.

Examples of Injection attacks are SQL Injection, NoSQL Injection, LDAP Injection, and Command Injection.

How to prevent injection attacks:

• Use parameterized queries or prepared statements for database interactions.
• Validate and sanitize all user input.
• Escape user input before incorporating it into SQL queries or command execution.
• Employ least privilege principles for database user accounts.
• Consider using ORM libraries to handle input sanitization automatically.
• Whitelist allowed input characters and formats rather than blacklisting.
• Regularly audit code for vulnerabilities related to injection attacks.
• Educate developers on secure coding practices.
• Keep software dependencies updated to patch known vulnerabilities.

4)Design Flaws

Attackers can threaten model workflows in software to open up a wide range of vulnerabilities and flaws, allowing them to exploit unsafe designs in the software products. The attacker looks for weak APIs and finds one that fails to properly filter input vectors and bypasses the organization's API security gateway. OWASP recommends that companies implement principles such as threat modeling, secure design patterns, and reference architectures to ensure safer software designs.

How to prevent insecure design:

• Perform thorough threat modeling and risk assessments.
• Follow secure design principles (least privilege, defense in depth).
• Use secure architecture patterns and frameworks.
• Implement strong input validation and output encoding.
• Assume an adversarial environment and design accordingly.
• Minimize unnecessary functionality to limit the attack surface.
• Apply the principle of separation of concerns.
• Conduct regular security reviews and validations.
• Involve security experts throughout the design process.
• Provide security training for developers.
• Enforce secure coding standards and guidelines.
  
  

5)Security Misconfiguration

Security misconfigurations occur out of security measures that are incorrectly configured or left insecure, leaving your systems and data at high risk. A misconfiguration could be caused by poorly described configuration modifications, not changing default settings or a technical issue with any element of your endpoints. Organizations are exposed to misconfiguration assaults due to a lack of clarity and a centralized procedure to correct these misconfigurations.

How to prevent security misconfiguration:

• Implement secure defaults for systems and applications.
• Keep software components updated with security patches.
• Utilize automated security scanning and auditing tools.
• Implement strong authentication mechanisms.
• Enforce access controls and authorization policies.
• Segment networks to limit the impact of breaches.
• Monitor system activities and maintain comprehensive logs.
• Incorporate security into the software development lifecycle.
• Conduct regular security assessments and testing.
  
  

6)Outdated Security Components

You, as well as your clients and application users, would be impacted if the components you utilize to develop your applications became outdated or had a major vulnerability. Managing these vulnerabilities is not as simple as running the update command or obtaining the updated dependencies and packages to manage your constituent dependencies. A vulnerability can also be caused by an insecure software setup or obsolete and unpatched dependencies in the component's dependency chain.

How to prevent vulnerable and outdated security components:

• Monitor security advisories and alerts from vendors and security organizations.
• Use automated tools to scan for known security vulnerabilities in code and dependencies.
• Establish a process for reviewing and addressing security advisories promptly.
• Maintain an inventory of software components to track versions and dependencies.
• Consider automated dependency management tools for updating dependencies.
• Implement version pinning or dependency locking to control component versions.
• Assess third-party component security track records before integration.
• Include security considerations in procurement and vendor management processes.
• Educate developers on the importance of using up-to-date components.
• Establish a process for retiring and replacing unsupported components.

7)Identification And Authentication Failures

Authentication vulnerabilities related to how strong it is or how it is implemented can lead to potentially damaging data breaches. Attacks targeting this vulnerability include credential stuffing, session identifier exposure, brute force attacks, session fixation, and so on. Sometimes a strong attack can also be aimed at password data stores.

How to prevent Identification and authentication failures:

• Enforce strong password policies.
• Use secure authentication protocols such as OAuth or OpenID Connect for web applications and APIs.
• Encrypt sensitive authentication data.
• Implement account lockout mechanisms.
• Regularly review and update user access permissions.
• Monitor authentication logs for suspicious activities.
• Utilize biometric authentication methods such as fingerprint or facial recognition, where feasible and appropriate, where feasible.
• Implement strong session management techniques, including session timeouts and secure cookie attributes
  
  

8)Software And Data Integrity Failures

Due to faulty assumptions in software testing, misguided development mechanisms, and sometimes even non-existent mechanisms, the constituent components of web applications are vulnerable to attacks. The services of the application could be broken up without the essential integrity checks in place by the developers. Security assumptions that may have been made in the past may not apply to a modern distributed technology stack. Threat modeling resets are required in such instances, but they are often neglected.

How to prevent software and data integrity failures:

• Use cryptographic hash functions for verification.
• Apply code signing for software authenticity.
• Establish robust change management processes.
• Regularly back up and verify data integrity.
• Monitor system logs and audit trails.
• Use file integrity monitoring tools.
• Apply least privilege principles.

9)Security Logging and Monitoring Failures

Oversight in adequately logging, monitoring, or notifying security events such as login attempts makes suspicious behavior difficult to pinpoint and increases the chances of an attacker effectively exploiting your application. Allowing long-term scans of the applications to go undetected enhances the chances of the attacker discovering a vulnerability and exploiting it successfully.

How to prevent security logging and monitoring failures:

• Define clear logging and monitoring requirements.
• Implement centralized logging and monitoring solutions.
• Configure systems to capture relevant security events.
• Enforce proper log retention policies.
• Regularly review and analyze logs for anomalies.
• Establish alerting mechanisms for real-time notifications.
• Test and validate logging and monitoring systems regularly.
• Provide training for personnel responsible for monitoring.
• Integrate logging and monitoring with incident response processes.
• Continuously evaluate and improve logging practices.
• Protect log data with access controls and encryption.
• Monitor the health and performance of logging systems.

10)Server-Side Request Forgery

The Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerabilities let attackers submit forged queries from a sensitive application's back-end server. SSRF attacks are commonly used by cyber criminals to attack internal systems that are shielded by firewalls and are not accessible from the outside network. An attacker might also use SSRF to get access to services provided through the compromised server's loopback interface.

How to prevent server-side request forgery:

• Implement strict input validation and sanitization.
• Use whitelisting to restrict access to trusted resources.
• Enforce network restrictions to limit outbound requests.
• Validate user-supplied URLs using URL parsing libraries.
• Avoid using user input to construct internal requests.
• Implement rate limiting and request throttling.
• Utilize security headers such as Content-Security-Policy (CSP).
• Educate developers and administrators about SSRF risks.
• Monitor server logs for suspicious outbound requests.
• Keep software components and libraries updated.

ALSO READ: 9 Transaction & Security Protocols for Compliance of a FinTech App

The Right Security Protocols Can Safeguard Your Enterprise Application

To be regarded as ready to go live and make available to users, your software program or network must be protected against the ten vulnerabilities listed above. A good security protocol, for example, can replicate the actions of an actual attacker to find flaws that aren't discovered by standard security enhancement techniques.

A technology partner such as Daffodil, with its Application Security Services, can provide highly secure solutions for your application development needs. Book a free consultation with us today.