Number 2 in the OWASP top 10 is cryptographic failure. This refers to either the failure of or lack of cryptography. This often leads to a leak of sensitive information. You need to consider the protection of data in transit and in use. This means using secure connections such as HTTPS. You should not use default or simple crypto keys. You should keep a data inventory, which includes retention, deletion, and data owner rules for all the data on your network. You should also ensure up to date and strong cryptographic keys, algorithms, and protocols are in place.
One of the OWASP’s top 10 is vulnerable and outdated components. The article mentioned vulnerable and outdated was #9 in 2017 and jumped to a #7 in 2021. It is a worldwide known issue that organization’s struggle to test and assess risk. By not patching, the data becomes at risk. The organization’s system is more vulnerable and known to ransomware attacks and data breaches. Also, this can lead to cybercriminals having access into the rest of the company’s systems.
I agree with you that it is important to consider the protection of data in transit and in use. The lack of multi-factor authentication and the process of recovering with weak or invalid credentials all take a toll on data protection. Ensuring that registration, credential recovery, and API paths are made using the same information for all results is also a way to protect your data.
OWASP’s top 10 list the most critical risks that are updated regularly. This document is a great resource for finding and understanding the risks. Injections continue to stay within the top 5 through dropping in 2021 to third place. This is not uncommon as SQL injections tend to be popular. SQL injections, in particular, can help get around application security and could alter data. Prevention is key and some mitigation techniques include using safe APIs, using positive user input validation, and using the proper syntax.
Hi Dhaval,
The OWASP Top 10 lists the ten most common Web application security risks. By writing code and performing robust tests that take these risks into account, developers can create secure applications that protect users’ confidential data from attackers.
One of the OWASP’s top 10 is Broken Authentication, which confirms the user’s identity and authentication. Management is critical to preventing authentication-related issues. Applications are vulnerable to attacks if the data provided by the user is not authenticated by the application.
If the application may have an authentication weakness, an automated attack may be allowed, where the attacker has a list of valid usernames and passwords. On the other hand, where possible, implement multi-factor authentication to prevent automation, credential stuffing, brute force, and theft
Credential reuse attack. Authentication weaknesses can be prevented by disallowing default, weak, or well-known passwords.
Authentication is one of the most important things to implement in order to protect a user’s data. Without authentication, an unauthorized user can lead to unauthorized access and data breaches.
OWASP Top Ten is a comprehensive list of the most common application vulnerabilities and security risks. Top 10:2021 is a dynamic restructuring of most prevalent security vulnerabilities from Top 10:2017 as well as some new additions (Insure Design, Software and Data Integrity Failures and Server-Side Request Forgery). OWASP Top Ten is a standard intended to be used by both developers and application penetration testers to improve an application’s overall security. Broken Access Control rose from the fifth security risk to the number one security risk in 2021. Broken Access Control occurs when intentionally or unintentionally a user can elevate permissions to access privileged information. Broken Access Control can be abused by manipulating APIs and Metadata.
The Open Web Application Security Project® (OWASP) is a nonprofit foundation that works to improve the security of software. Through community-led open-source software projects, hundreds of local chapters worldwide, tens of thousands of members, and leading educational and training conferences, the OWASP Foundation is the source for developers and technologists to secure the web. The OWAPS Top 10 are their best-known projects. The OWAPS Top 10 pays attention to the 10 most critical risks and is continuously updated. It is being suggested that this document be used as an “awareness document” for organizations to reduce security risks. This document includes attack scenarios and prevention methods connected to the following 10 risks: Injection, Broken Authentication, Sensitive data exposure, XML External Entities (XXE), Broken Access control, Security misconfigurations, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Insecure Deserialization, through the use of Components with known vulnerabilities, Insufficient logging and monitoring.
The OWASP Top 10 document outlines the most critical security risks to web applications. Although it is intended to be an awareness document, it has become an industry standard for application security. These readings outline the current top 10 threats, along with tips on how to follow its guidelines and use it as a foundation for application security. The current top threat is Broken Access Control, which rose up from #5 in 2017. This reiterates the importance of host hardening and proper ACL policies. Another threat that rose significantly is Vulnerable and Outdated Components. Similar to the Equifax breach, lack of communication or poor patch management can lead to organizations using vulnerable software, even after a patch has been released.
Hi Patrick, great points! I really like how you tied in some of our other class lessons into this post. The OWASP Top 10 was made for a reason, and really shows some of the most prevalent threats this industry faces. I think that the vulnerable and outdated components software is also of high significance, since organizations lacking patching are so often tied to hacks/breaches.
As a pentester and CTF player (system compromise based capture the flag style offensive security training), I am familiar with the OWASP top 10 as they are the most common ways to attack web applications, and many tools in Kali Linux for example can search for and exploit some of these vulnerabilities quickly by an experienced attacker. It is very common to try to attack some of the items in the OWASP top 10 with tools like Burp Suite, or OWASP’s own web app fuzzing and pentesting tool, OWASP Zap, to try to compromise a web application while searching for these types of vulnerabilities / security weaknesses.
Thinking about the OWASP top 10 from an offensive perspective is intriguing because my cybersecurity perspective thus far has been mostly defensive. Something that I personally believe is that it is impossible to be the best of the best when it comes to cyber defense if one is not aware of how the offensive side works, and the different ways to locate and exploit vulnerabilities in applications and networks. I feel like I will always be one step behind if I do not keep up to date with the most novel vulnerabilities and ways they are exploited, so I will definitely look into the hacking CTF game you mention and how it works more in depth.
The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is an open-source application security community whose goal is to improve software security. Its industry-standard OWASP Top 10 Security Vulnerabilities List guide lists the most critical application security risks to help developers better protect the applications they design and deploy. Find an overview and practical tips on the top 10 vulnerabilities in the OWASP Top 10 Security Vulnerabilities List Developer’s Guide. The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a non-profit organization and is not affiliated with any business or consortium. All facilities and documentation provided and developed by OWASP are free from commercial considerations.
Great summary. OWASP is a useful guide for application security acting as a good checklist for developers and security testers to make sure the application does not have any of those common vulnerabilities. With OWASP being updated yearly it keeps everything up to date making it a reliable tool.
One takeaway of mine from the OWASP Top 10 Application Security Risks list is the importance of security logging and monitoring. This category is ninth on the list of ten, but it is important to note that it is one of the two application security risks added from the community survey. This shows that professionals in the IT/IS industry find security logging and monitoring to be a huge problem, and it was likely not included on the previous OWASP list because it is difficult to quantify or because companies do not want to admit that they do not maintain their logs and monitoring processes well. This application security risk reminded me of our recent case study on the 2017 Equifax breach, and how the intrusion could have been detected sooner if Equifax’s SSL certificates were up to date.
Completely agree, logging is such a critical component of information security. Logging enables monitoring for both pro-active and re-active security operations. If a server, client, etc doesn’t have logging enabled it becomes expotentially more difficult to determine the root cause analysis of an incident.
OWASP Top 10 is an awareness documents for securing the application. It could be used as a starting point for coding or testing. It contains the risk that the application would have rather how to test for those risks. The list of the OWASP Top 10 includes: Broken Access Controls, Cryptographic Failures, Injections, Insecure Design, Security Misconfiguration, Vulnerable and Outdated Components, Identification and Authentication Failures, Software and Data Integrity Failures, Security Logging and Monitoring Failures, and Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF).
Hello Patel,
Thank you for sharing your analysis and I totally agree with your point. I would like to add some extra analysis to your explanation. The Top10 will be updated every 2-3 years in accordance with advancements in technology and changes in the AppSec mark.
One takeaway this week was the 6th OWASP Top 10 web application security risk: Vulnerable and Outdated Components. OWASP highlights the importance of maintaining a regular patching schedule and a strong patch management program. By continuously monitoring both proprietary and open source software updates/patches, this risk can be successfully mitigated. This is especially important in light of situations such as the Equifax data breach.
Hey Lauren,
Patching the software is important to keep the network secure. As the attackers could use the unpatched software to gain an unauthorized access to the network. In addition, the most important patches that should be applied as soon as possible would the one which vulnerability provides an unauthorized access to the attackers remotely.
The OWASP Top 10 is a standard awareness document for developers and web application security. It represents a broad consensus about web applications’ most critical security risks. Developers globally recognize it as the first step toward more secure coding.
• Broken Access Control
• Cryptographic Failures
• Injection
• Insecure Design
• Security Misconfiguration
• Vulnerable and Outdated Components
• Identification and Authentication Failures
• Software and Data Integrity Failures.
• Security Logging and Monitoring Failures.
• Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)
Item 3. The injection is an attack on a web application’s database using Structured Query Language (SQL) to gain information or execute actions that generally would require an authenticated user account. A hacker already has your database, and you only just realized it. This is an alarming situation. A typical example of SQL injection is when “101 OR 1=1” is passed instead of just “101”.
Item 4. This newest OWASP Top 10 revision talks about risks related to design and architectural flaws, with recommendations for implementing threat modeling, secure design patterns, and reference architectures – from the very beginning of the design process.
A10:2021-Server-Side Request Forgery is added from the Top 10 community survey (#1). The data shows a relatively low incidence rate with above average testing coverage, along with above-average ratings for Exploit and Impact potential. This category represents the scenario where the security community members are telling us this is important, even though it’s not illustrated in the data at this time.
Number 2 in the OWASP top 10 is cryptographic failure. This refers to either the failure of or lack of cryptography. This often leads to a leak of sensitive information. You need to consider the protection of data in transit and in use. This means using secure connections such as HTTPS. You should not use default or simple crypto keys. You should keep a data inventory, which includes retention, deletion, and data owner rules for all the data on your network. You should also ensure up to date and strong cryptographic keys, algorithms, and protocols are in place.
One of the OWASP’s top 10 is vulnerable and outdated components. The article mentioned vulnerable and outdated was #9 in 2017 and jumped to a #7 in 2021. It is a worldwide known issue that organization’s struggle to test and assess risk. By not patching, the data becomes at risk. The organization’s system is more vulnerable and known to ransomware attacks and data breaches. Also, this can lead to cybercriminals having access into the rest of the company’s systems.
Hi Victoria,
I agree with you that it is important to consider the protection of data in transit and in use. The lack of multi-factor authentication and the process of recovering with weak or invalid credentials all take a toll on data protection. Ensuring that registration, credential recovery, and API paths are made using the same information for all results is also a way to protect your data.
OWASP’s top 10 list the most critical risks that are updated regularly. This document is a great resource for finding and understanding the risks. Injections continue to stay within the top 5 through dropping in 2021 to third place. This is not uncommon as SQL injections tend to be popular. SQL injections, in particular, can help get around application security and could alter data. Prevention is key and some mitigation techniques include using safe APIs, using positive user input validation, and using the proper syntax.
Hi Dhaval,
The OWASP Top 10 lists the ten most common Web application security risks. By writing code and performing robust tests that take these risks into account, developers can create secure applications that protect users’ confidential data from attackers.
One of the OWASP’s top 10 is Broken Authentication, which confirms the user’s identity and authentication. Management is critical to preventing authentication-related issues. Applications are vulnerable to attacks if the data provided by the user is not authenticated by the application.
If the application may have an authentication weakness, an automated attack may be allowed, where the attacker has a list of valid usernames and passwords. On the other hand, where possible, implement multi-factor authentication to prevent automation, credential stuffing, brute force, and theft
Credential reuse attack. Authentication weaknesses can be prevented by disallowing default, weak, or well-known passwords.
Dan,
Authentication is one of the most important things to implement in order to protect a user’s data. Without authentication, an unauthorized user can lead to unauthorized access and data breaches.
OWASP Top Ten is a comprehensive list of the most common application vulnerabilities and security risks. Top 10:2021 is a dynamic restructuring of most prevalent security vulnerabilities from Top 10:2017 as well as some new additions (Insure Design, Software and Data Integrity Failures and Server-Side Request Forgery). OWASP Top Ten is a standard intended to be used by both developers and application penetration testers to improve an application’s overall security. Broken Access Control rose from the fifth security risk to the number one security risk in 2021. Broken Access Control occurs when intentionally or unintentionally a user can elevate permissions to access privileged information. Broken Access Control can be abused by manipulating APIs and Metadata.
The Open Web Application Security Project® (OWASP) is a nonprofit foundation that works to improve the security of software. Through community-led open-source software projects, hundreds of local chapters worldwide, tens of thousands of members, and leading educational and training conferences, the OWASP Foundation is the source for developers and technologists to secure the web. The OWAPS Top 10 are their best-known projects. The OWAPS Top 10 pays attention to the 10 most critical risks and is continuously updated. It is being suggested that this document be used as an “awareness document” for organizations to reduce security risks. This document includes attack scenarios and prevention methods connected to the following 10 risks: Injection, Broken Authentication, Sensitive data exposure, XML External Entities (XXE), Broken Access control, Security misconfigurations, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Insecure Deserialization, through the use of Components with known vulnerabilities, Insufficient logging and monitoring.
The OWASP Top 10 document outlines the most critical security risks to web applications. Although it is intended to be an awareness document, it has become an industry standard for application security. These readings outline the current top 10 threats, along with tips on how to follow its guidelines and use it as a foundation for application security. The current top threat is Broken Access Control, which rose up from #5 in 2017. This reiterates the importance of host hardening and proper ACL policies. Another threat that rose significantly is Vulnerable and Outdated Components. Similar to the Equifax breach, lack of communication or poor patch management can lead to organizations using vulnerable software, even after a patch has been released.
Hi Patrick, great points! I really like how you tied in some of our other class lessons into this post. The OWASP Top 10 was made for a reason, and really shows some of the most prevalent threats this industry faces. I think that the vulnerable and outdated components software is also of high significance, since organizations lacking patching are so often tied to hacks/breaches.
As a pentester and CTF player (system compromise based capture the flag style offensive security training), I am familiar with the OWASP top 10 as they are the most common ways to attack web applications, and many tools in Kali Linux for example can search for and exploit some of these vulnerabilities quickly by an experienced attacker. It is very common to try to attack some of the items in the OWASP top 10 with tools like Burp Suite, or OWASP’s own web app fuzzing and pentesting tool, OWASP Zap, to try to compromise a web application while searching for these types of vulnerabilities / security weaknesses.
Antonio,
Thinking about the OWASP top 10 from an offensive perspective is intriguing because my cybersecurity perspective thus far has been mostly defensive. Something that I personally believe is that it is impossible to be the best of the best when it comes to cyber defense if one is not aware of how the offensive side works, and the different ways to locate and exploit vulnerabilities in applications and networks. I feel like I will always be one step behind if I do not keep up to date with the most novel vulnerabilities and ways they are exploited, so I will definitely look into the hacking CTF game you mention and how it works more in depth.
-Mike
The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is an open-source application security community whose goal is to improve software security. Its industry-standard OWASP Top 10 Security Vulnerabilities List guide lists the most critical application security risks to help developers better protect the applications they design and deploy. Find an overview and practical tips on the top 10 vulnerabilities in the OWASP Top 10 Security Vulnerabilities List Developer’s Guide. The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a non-profit organization and is not affiliated with any business or consortium. All facilities and documentation provided and developed by OWASP are free from commercial considerations.
Hi Zijian,
Great summary. OWASP is a useful guide for application security acting as a good checklist for developers and security testers to make sure the application does not have any of those common vulnerabilities. With OWASP being updated yearly it keeps everything up to date making it a reliable tool.
One takeaway of mine from the OWASP Top 10 Application Security Risks list is the importance of security logging and monitoring. This category is ninth on the list of ten, but it is important to note that it is one of the two application security risks added from the community survey. This shows that professionals in the IT/IS industry find security logging and monitoring to be a huge problem, and it was likely not included on the previous OWASP list because it is difficult to quantify or because companies do not want to admit that they do not maintain their logs and monitoring processes well. This application security risk reminded me of our recent case study on the 2017 Equifax breach, and how the intrusion could have been detected sooner if Equifax’s SSL certificates were up to date.
Hi Michael,
Completely agree, logging is such a critical component of information security. Logging enables monitoring for both pro-active and re-active security operations. If a server, client, etc doesn’t have logging enabled it becomes expotentially more difficult to determine the root cause analysis of an incident.
Kelly
OWASP Top 10 is an awareness documents for securing the application. It could be used as a starting point for coding or testing. It contains the risk that the application would have rather how to test for those risks. The list of the OWASP Top 10 includes: Broken Access Controls, Cryptographic Failures, Injections, Insecure Design, Security Misconfiguration, Vulnerable and Outdated Components, Identification and Authentication Failures, Software and Data Integrity Failures, Security Logging and Monitoring Failures, and Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF).
Hello Patel,
Thank you for sharing your analysis and I totally agree with your point. I would like to add some extra analysis to your explanation. The Top10 will be updated every 2-3 years in accordance with advancements in technology and changes in the AppSec mark.
One takeaway this week was the 6th OWASP Top 10 web application security risk: Vulnerable and Outdated Components. OWASP highlights the importance of maintaining a regular patching schedule and a strong patch management program. By continuously monitoring both proprietary and open source software updates/patches, this risk can be successfully mitigated. This is especially important in light of situations such as the Equifax data breach.
Hey Lauren,
Patching the software is important to keep the network secure. As the attackers could use the unpatched software to gain an unauthorized access to the network. In addition, the most important patches that should be applied as soon as possible would the one which vulnerability provides an unauthorized access to the attackers remotely.
The OWASP Top 10 is a standard awareness document for developers and web application security. It represents a broad consensus about web applications’ most critical security risks. Developers globally recognize it as the first step toward more secure coding.
• Broken Access Control
• Cryptographic Failures
• Injection
• Insecure Design
• Security Misconfiguration
• Vulnerable and Outdated Components
• Identification and Authentication Failures
• Software and Data Integrity Failures.
• Security Logging and Monitoring Failures.
• Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)
Item 3. The injection is an attack on a web application’s database using Structured Query Language (SQL) to gain information or execute actions that generally would require an authenticated user account. A hacker already has your database, and you only just realized it. This is an alarming situation. A typical example of SQL injection is when “101 OR 1=1” is passed instead of just “101”.
Item 4. This newest OWASP Top 10 revision talks about risks related to design and architectural flaws, with recommendations for implementing threat modeling, secure design patterns, and reference architectures – from the very beginning of the design process.
A10:2021-Server-Side Request Forgery is added from the Top 10 community survey (#1). The data shows a relatively low incidence rate with above average testing coverage, along with above-average ratings for Exploit and Impact potential. This category represents the scenario where the security community members are telling us this is important, even though it’s not illustrated in the data at this time.
https://owasp.org/www-project-top-ten/