What is “OWASP Top 10 Most Critical Web Application Security Risks”: Part 1
Introduction
As technology and knowledge advance, several applications come to the surface. However, most of these applications have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that could be exploited. Meanwhile, to improve the security of applications being relied on by hundreds of organizations, OWASP complies and presents these vulnerabilities in a list and offers ways to enhance the safety of these applications in another document that the organization releases.
OWASP is the acronym for Open Web Application Security Project, a not-for-profit group that educates organizations, developers, designers, and business owners about the most common security vulnerabilities in web applications. It is a group that comprises information technology professionals with a common interest in improving the security of software applications. OWASPÂ supports open source and commercial security products.
As the information technology for witness more changes, the scope of the vulnerabilities or risks are also changing. To this effect, the Open Web Application Security Project creates and releases the list of the top 10 web application security risks from time to time.
How OWASP Checks for Vulnerability
OWASP derives its information from over 40 data sources submitted by companies that specialize in applications security. The data includes vulnerabilities discovered and provided by several participating organizations and from more than 100,000 released and installed applications and APIs.
OWASP assesses each vulnerability based on its weakness detectability, technical impacts, weakness prevalence, and exploitability. Meanwhile, the vulnerabilities are always evolving that is why the list of the vulnerabilities is updated from time to time.
OWASP also carries out what is called ‘Dependency check.’ This is an application that recognizes project dependencies and examines any known or publicly disclosed vulnerabilities. Presently, the utility supports only Java and .NET; more applications will be added as time goes on.
What Is “OWASP Top 10 Most Critical Web Application Security Risks”
- INJECTION
Injection comprises LDAP, OS, SQL, and other types of vulnerabilities by which untrusted data is sent to an interpreter in addition to a command or query. An injection can be used by an attacker to manipulate the interpreter to grant access to the attackers unintentionally to access sensitive data or running malicious code.
An injection into applications can be prevented by regularly reviewing the source code. This is a task that must be done by developers and managers. To do this, the must add dynamic application test (DAST) and SAST tools into the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline. Besides, they can use SQL controls, whitelist server-side input validation, and a secure API.
- BROKEN AUTHENTICATION
When an authentication process and management function are not executed correctly, this could allow attackers to compromise session tokens, passwords, or keys. They can also take advantage of this inadequacy to pretend as authorized users.
One effective way to curtail this vulnerability is by introducing multi-factor authentication because it prevents reuse of stolen credential for during attacks. Also, they should integrate programs that detect weak passwords and restrict failed login attempts.
