22 Common Web Application Vulnerabilities to Know

You should never display anything to a user other than an error message that explains what went wrong and what they can do to resolve it. Some industries, such as Retail, Healthcare, and Education saw exponential growth in revenue during the year 2020, largely due to consumer behavior and social interaction changes during COVID. As these industries used more open source https://investmentsanalysis.info/what-is-a-cloffice-how-i-turned-my-closet-into-an/ in their applications, they had the largest number of vulnerabilities and high-risk vulnerabilities. Determining which open-source components are secure should be a primary concern for any application security group. XDR collects security data from all layers of the security stack, including web applications, networks, private and public clouds, and endpoints.

These vulnerabilities are some of the most common and high-impact vulnerabilities in web applications, and their visibility makes them common targets of cyber threat actors. To collect the most comprehensive dataset related to identified application vulnerabilities to-date to enable analysis for the Top 10 and other future research as well. This data should come from a variety of sources; security vendors and consultancies, bug bounties, along with company/organizational contributions. Data will be normalized to allow for level comparison between Human assisted Tooling and Tooling assisted Humans.

Web Applications and Vulnerabilities: What to Look Out For

These commands may change, steal or delete data, and they may also allow the hacker access to the root system. SQL (officially pronounced ess-cue-el, but commonly pronounced “sequel”) stands for structured query language; it’s a programming language used to communicate with databases. Many of the servers that store critical data for websites and services use SQL to manage the data in their databases. Structured Query Language (SQL) is now so commonly used to manage and direct information on applications that hackers have come up with ways to slip their own SQL commands into the database.

For more information about the security threats to your cloud-based applications, check out this eBook. The OWASP Top Ten list is based on a combination of analysis of user-provided data and a survey of professionals within the industry. Based on data submitted by the community, the OWASP team determines the top eight vulnerabilities on its list, providing visibility into the vulnerabilities that are most common in production code today. Organizations were asked to submit the CWEs that they saw in testing and the number of applications tested that contained at least one instance of a CWE. The resulting 400 CWEs were then analyzed based on impact and exploitability and classified to produce eight of the top ten categories.

#4. Insecure Design

In an SQL injection attack, an attacker goes after a vulnerable website to target its stored data, such as user credentials or sensitive financial data. But if the attacker would rather directly target a website’s users, they may opt for a cross-site scripting attack. Similar to an SQL injection attack, this attack also involves injecting malicious code into a website or web-based app. However, in this case the malicious code the attacker has injected only runs in the user’s browser when they visit the attacked website, and it goes after the visitor directly. Successful SQL injection attacks typically occur because a vulnerable application doesn’t properly sanitize inputs provided by the user, by not stripping out anything that appears to be SQL code. As CI/CD processes become more common within organizations, there’s an increased demand for application security solutions.

• A security audit involves reviewing the code, configurations, and other aspects of your web application to identify any potential weaknesses that could be exploited by attackers.
• Making matters more difficult for security teams is that bots are advanced enough to mimic human behavior, and can harness both machine learning (ML) and AI to stay below detection thresholds.
• A cross-site scripting vulnerability allows the attacker to bypass the security mechanisms of a website and inject malicious code that is executed when the victim accesses the website.
• However, in this case the malicious code the attacker has injected only runs in the user’s browser when they visit the attacked website, and it goes after the visitor directly.

Supply chain vulnerabilities have emerged as a major concern in recent years, especially as threat actors have attempted to insert malicious or vulnerable code into commonly used libraries and third-party dependencies. If an organization lacks visibility into the external code that is used within its applications — including nested dependencies — and fails to scan it for dependencies, then it may be vulnerable to exploitation. Also, a failure to promptly apply security updates to these dependencies could leave exploitable vulnerabilities open to attack.

Vulnerable Outdated Components

Some of these defects constitute actual vulnerabilities that can be exploited, introducing risks to organizations. It involves leveraging secure development practices and implementing security measures throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC), ensuring that design-level flaws and implementation-level bugs are addressed. Web application security involves minimizing vulnerabilities to your software, making it immune to a range of cyber threats. The goal of web application security is to prevent security breaches, protect sensitive information, and maintain the integrity and availability of web applications.

• These types of attacks occur when attackers exploit a weakly-configured XML parser.
• However, any web application that allows user input to be used to specify the name or location of a file that is to be included and executed can be vulnerable to LFI attacks.
• Access control helps you control what sections of a website and what application data different visitors can access.
• Efficient and actionable static application security testing re-imagined for the developer.

Server-side request forgery (SSRF) is unusual among the vulnerabilities listed in the OWASP Top Ten list because it describes a very specific vulnerability or attack rather than a general category. SSRF vulnerabilities are relatively rare; however, they have a significant impact if they are identified and exploited by an attacker. The Capital One hack is an example of a recent, high-impact security incident that took advantage of an SSRF vulnerability.

For example, they could embed a link to a malicious JavaScript in a comment on a blog. Recognizing the impact of an attack is also key to managing your firm’s risk, as the effects of a successful attack can be used to gauge the vulnerability’s total severity. If issues are identified during a security test, defining their severity allows your firm to efficiently prioritize the remediation efforts. Start with critical severity issues and work towards lower impact issues to minimize risk to your firm. With this approach, you can ensure that your application is secure against the most prevalent web application vulnerabilities in the threat landscape right now and ensure that your user’s data is secure. If DevSecOps isn’t an option for the organization or development process/stage, security tools can help surface issues early so they can be addressed.

Adding a guided security solution into the continuous integration/continuous delivery development function helps discover known scanned application vulnerabilities before a product is released. Broken authentication attacks try to use an existing account to give the attacker high-level privileges to enter higher secure data areas. Authentication is broken when passwords, session token keys, account information, or user identities are compromised. A sensitive data exposure happens when a company exposes its sensitive data unknowingly. This data exposure can lead to sensitive data being destroyed, tampered with, or illegally leaked.

#2. Cryptographic Failures

SAST is typically rule-based, and scan results typically include false positives, so you’ll need to carefully analyze and filter the results to identify real security issues. Here are a few technologies you can use to protect your web applications against vulnerabilities, as well as respond to attacks if they happen. There are multiple factors to prevent this type of attack, unique to the organizational security implemented.

These training sessions should cover topics such as password management, how to recognize and avoid phishing attacks, and how to identify suspicious activity. It’s important that these training sessions are ongoing and incorporate real-life scenarios to keep employees engaged and informed. An SQL Injection vulnerability allows the attacker to bypass United Training Chosen as Authorized CompTIA Training Partner Blog the security mechanisms of a website and send SQL commands directly to the backend database. To find out if a website is vulnerable to SQL Injection or not the attacker tries to input malicious code in a website form’s input field. If the website responds with an error that includes an SQL error, the website is vulnerable to SQL Injection.