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What is OWASP? Top 10 Tests used and Why is it important?
Admin
May 18, 2022
9 min.
The OWASP Top 10 is a list of the 10 most common web application security risks. By writing code and performing robust testing with these risks in mind, developers can create secure applications that keep their users’ confidential data safe from attackers.
OWASP, or the Open Web Application Security Project, is a nonprofit organization focused on software security. Their projects include several open-source software development programs and toolkits, local chapters, and conferences, among other things. One of their projects is the maintenance of the OWASP Top 10, a list of the top 10 security risks faced by web applications.
Testing for OWASP vulnerabilities is a crucial part of secure application development. The sheer number of risks and potential fixes can seem overwhelming but are easy to manage if you follow a few simple steps:
So, what are the top 10 risks according to OWASP? We break down each item, its risk level, how to test for them, and how to resolve each.
If authentication and access restriction are not properly implemented, it's easy for attackers to take whatever they want. With broken access control flaws, unauthenticated or unauthorized users may have access to sensitive files and systems or even user privilege settings.
Configuration errors and insecure access control practices are hard to detect as automated processes cannot always test for them. Weak access controls and issues with credentials management are preventable with secure coding practices, as well as preventative measures like locking down administrative accounts and controls and using multi-factor authentication.
Mitigating Broken Access Control
This is also known as information disclosure or information leakage. This usually occurs when an application or website unknowingly discloses sensitive data to users who do not have the privilege of view or access.
According to OWASP, these are some of the information that may get leaked to the public:
Sensitive Data Exposure Mitigation:
Store image Mitigation:
Injection flaws, such as SQL, NoSQL, OS, and LDAP injection, occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command or query. The attacker’s hostile data can trick the interpreter into executing unintended commands or accessing data without proper authorization.
Preventing Injection Attacks
Insecure Design is a category of weaknesses that originate from missing or ineffective security controls. Some applications are built without security in mind. Others do have a secure design but have implementation flaws that can lead to exploitable vulnerabilities.
By definition, an insecure design cannot be fixed by proper implementation or configuration. This is because it is lacking basic security controls that can effectively protect against important threats.
Preventing insecure design
Security misconfigurations are security controls that are inaccurately configured or left insecure, putting your systems and data at risk. Any poorly documented configuration changes, default settings, or a technical issue across any component in your endpoints could lead to a misconfiguration.
Security misconfigurations can be prevented by changing default webmaster or CMS settings, removing unused code features, and controlling user comments and user information visibility. Developers should also remove unnecessary documentation, features, frameworks, and samples, segment application architecture, and automate the effectiveness of web environment configurations and settings.
How to Prevent
This vulnerability results from a developer using a component, framework, library, or some dependencies that already have a known vulnerability that may compromise the entire system.
When such components are executed with full privileges and it’s vulnerable, this will make the exploitation from an intruder very easy, which may cause some serious data loss or server takeover.
Components with Known Vulnerability Mitigation:
Identification and Authentication Failures, previously known as Broken Authentication, this category now also includes security problems related to user identities. Confirming and verifying user identities, and establishing secure session management, is critical to protect against many types of exploits and attacks.
Mitigating Broken Authentication
Software and Data Integrity Failures involve code and infrastructure that are vulnerable to integrity violations. This includes software updates, modification of sensitive data, and CI/CD pipeline changes performed without validation. An insecure CI/CD pipeline can lead to unauthorized access, the introduction of malware, and other severe vulnerabilities.
There is a global concern around applications with automatic updates. In several cases, attackers broke into the supply chain and created their own malicious updates. Thousands of organizations were compromised by downloading updates and applying these malicious updates to previously trusted applications, without integrity validation.
Preventing software and data integrity failures
Security Logging and Monitoring Failures, previously named “Insufficient Logging and Monitoring”, involve weaknesses in an application’s ability to detect security risks and respond to them. Breaches cannot be detected without logging and monitoring. Failures in this category affect visibility, alerting, and forensics.
Preventing security logging and monitoring failures
SSRF flaws occur whenever a web application is fetching a remote resource without validating the user-supplied URL. It allows an attacker to coerce the application to send a crafted request to an unexpected destination, even when protected by a firewall, VPN, or another type of network access control list (ACL).
As modern web applications provide end-users with convenient features, fetching a URL becomes a common scenario. As a result, the incidence of SSRF is increasing. Also, the severity of SSRF is becoming higher due to cloud services and the complexity of architectures.
Mitigating Server-Side Request Forgery
Are you an entrepreneur or business owner and app/website security is your top concern? Look no further, you are at the right place, iRoid Solution is your one-stop solution for all your application development and security problems. Let's connect and discuss how we can develop your application/website with top security measures
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