6/9/2020 OWASP Top Ten Web Application Security Risks | OWASP

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The OWASP Top 10 is a standard awareness document for
improve the security of
developers and web application security. It represents a
software through its
broad consensus about the most critical security risks to community-led open
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towards more secure coding.

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Companies should adopt this document and start the
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these risks. Using the OWASP Top 10 is perhaps the most
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‘Translation Efforts’
1. Injection. Injection flaws, such as SQL, NoSQL, OS, Twitter
and LDAP injection, occur when untrusted data is sent
to an interpreter as part of a command or query. The Code Repository
attacker’s hostile data can trick the interpreter into repo
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6/9/2020 OWASP Top Ten Web Application Security Risks | OWASP

executing unintended commands or accessing data

without proper authorization. Leaders
2. Broken Authentication. Application functions related Andrew van der Stock
to authentication and session management are often Brian Glas
implemented incorrectly, allowing attackers to Neil Smithline

compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to Torsten Gigler

exploit other implementation flaws to assume other
users’ identities temporarily or permanently.
3. Sensitive Data Exposure. Many web applications Upcoming Global
and APIs do not properly protect sensitive data, such Events
as financial, healthcare, and PII. Attackers may steal
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or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit
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card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive
Global AppSec SF
data may be compromised without extra protection,
October 19th-23rd
such as encryption at rest or in transit, and requires Global AppSec Dublin
special precautions when exchanged with the browser. February 15-19th, 2021
4. XML External Entities (XXE). Many older or poorly
configured XML processors evaluate external entity
references within XML documents. External entities
can be used to disclose internal files using the file URI
handler, internal file shares, internal port scanning,
remote code execution, and denial of service attacks.
5. Broken Access Control. Restrictions on what
authenticated users are allowed to do are often not
properly enforced. Attackers can exploit these flaws to
access unauthorized functionality and/or data, such as
access other users’ accounts, view sensitive files,
modify other users’ data, change access rights, etc.
6. Security Misconfiguration. Security misconfiguration
is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a
result of insecure default configurations, incomplete or
ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage,
misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error
messages containing sensitive information. Not only
must all operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and
applications be securely configured, but they must be
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6/9/2020 OWASP Top Ten Web Application Security Risks | OWASP

patched/upgraded in a timely fashion.

7. Cross-Site Scripting XSS. XSS flaws occur
whenever an application includes untrusted data in a
new web page without proper validation or escaping,
or updates an existing web page with user-supplied
data using a browser API that can create HTML or
JavaScript. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in
the victim’s browser which can hijack user sessions,
deface web sites, or redirect the user to malicious
sites.
8. Insecure Deserialization. Insecure deserialization
often leads to remote code execution. Even if
deserialization flaws do not result in remote code
execution, they can be used to perform attacks,
including replay attacks, injection attacks, and
privilege escalation attacks.
9. Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities.
Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other
software modules, run with the same privileges as the
application. If a vulnerable component is exploited,
such an attack can facilitate serious data loss or
server takeover. Applications and APIs using
components with known vulnerabilities may undermine
application defenses and enable various attacks and
impacts.
10. Insufficient Logging & Monitoring. Insufficient
logging and monitoring, coupled with missing or
ineffective integration with incident response, allows
attackers to further attack systems, maintain
persistence, pivot to more systems, and tamper,
extract, or destroy data. Most breach studies show
time to detect a breach is over 200 days, typically
detected by external parties rather than internal
processes or monitoring.

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