Day 2: An Introduction To The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP)

Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP)

In today’s post we go straight to the beginning of what we will be covering for the next 28 days of this challenge. Fasten your seatbelts and let us ride.

What Is OWASP

OWASP stands for Open Web Application Security Project, a standard awareness document for developers and web application security. The main goal is to increase awareness and provide a framework for prioritizing application security initiatives. The most recent OWASP vulnerabilities list was produced in 2021. It represents a broad consensus about web applications’ most critical security risks. It categorizes the vulnerabilities into types.

Any flaw in an organization’s information systems, internal controls, or system processes that cybercriminals can exploit is referred to as a vulnerability.

An OWASP Vulnerability: What Is It?

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) publishes information on security flaws or issues. The level of the security risk that each issue poses to online applications is determined by the contributions made by corporations, organizations, and security experts.

Which OWASP Vulnerabilities Are the Top 10?

Every three to four years, OWASP compiles and publishes its top ten list, emphasizing the most important security flaws. The list also offers illustrations of the flaws, explanations of how attackers can use them, and suggestions for how to minimize or completely avoid application exposure.

• A01 Broken Access Control
• A02 Cryptographic Failures
• A03 Injection
• A04 Insecure Design
• A05 Security Misconfiguration
• A06 Vulnerable and Outdated Components
• A07 Identification and Authentication Failures
• A08 Software and Data Integrity Failures
• A09 Security Logging and Monitoring Failures
• A10 Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF)

 

The OWASP Top 10

OWASP updates and releases a list of the top 10 web application vulnerabilities every few years. Along with the OWASP Top 10 Threats, the list also discusses each vulnerability’s potential effects and how to avoid them. A wide range of knowledgeable sources, including security consultants, vendors, and security teams from businesses and organizations of all kinds, were used to create the comprehensive list. It is acknowledged as a fundamental manual on best practices in web application security.

The main goal of the OWASP Top 10 is to increase awareness. However, since its release in 2003, businesses have adopted it as the de facto industry standard for AppSec. If we carefully examine the document, the number of CWEs (Common Weakness Enumerations) attached is precisely mentioned.

What Is the Top OWASP Reported Application Security Risk?

The most common weakness reported by OWASP is injection. The interpreter can access unlawful data or issue commands that were not intended by the program thanks to injection, which can convey untrusted data through SQL or other channels like LDAP.

How Are the Top 10 OWASP Vulnerabilities Tested?

A thorough testing manual is offered by OWASP, and it contains test cases for numerous test scenarios. By using tools to scan code for vulnerabilities with automatic warnings and consistent use of best practices, many development teams have adopted a more automated strategy.

A summary of OWASP

In short, OWASP is a repository of all things web application-security related, backed by the extensive knowledge and experience of its open community contributors.
Their main objective is to help website owners and security experts protect web applications from cyber attacks.

This will be all for the Day 2 post. Hope you enjoyed it, kindly let me know in the comments section. Be sure to check out other blog posts of interest or come back tomorrow for the next day’s post. 😊