Top 10 Web Application Vulnerabilities (and How to Find Them)
The OWASP Top 10 is the definitive list of the most critical web application security risks. Updated every few years, it represents the collective knowledge of thousands of security professionals worldwide. Here's each vulnerability, how attackers exploit it, and how automated tools detect it.
1. Broken Access Control
Users access data or functions they shouldn't — viewing other users' profiles, modifying admin endpoints, or escalating privileges. Detection: Automated tools test every endpoint with different role-based tokens and flag unauthorized access. TestForge generates role matrices and tests each permutation.
2. Cryptographic Failures
Sensitive data exposed due to weak encryption, missing HTTPS, or hardcoded keys. Detection: TLS scanning, header analysis, and source code pattern matching for API keys and secrets.
3. Injection (SQL, NoSQL, OS Command, LDAP)
Untrusted data sent to an interpreter as part of a command. SQL injection remains the most common. Detection: Fuzzing inputs with SQL/NoSQL payloads, timing-based detection, error-based detection.
4. Insecure Design
Missing or ineffective security controls built into the application architecture. Detection: Threat modeling analysis, security requirement validation, and workflow testing for missing rate limits or auth checks.
5. Security Misconfiguration
Default credentials, unnecessary features enabled, verbose error messages, missing security headers. Detection: Automated header scanning (CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options), directory listing checks, default credential testing.
6. Vulnerable and Outdated Components
Known CVEs in libraries, frameworks, or dependencies. Detection: Version fingerprinting via HTTP headers, JS file analysis, and dependency scanning.
7. Identification and Authentication Failures
Weak password policies, credential stuffing, missing MFA, session fixation. Detection: Brute force simulation, session token analysis, MFA enforcement checks.
8. Software and Data Integrity Failures
CI/CD pipeline attacks, insecure deserialization, untrusted CDN dependencies. Detection: Subresource integrity validation, deserialization payload testing.
9. Security Logging and Monitoring Failures
No audit logs, insufficient alerting, log injection. Detection: Trigger security events and verify logging, test log integrity.
10. Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)
Server fetches attacker-controlled URLs, accessing internal services. Detection: Inject internal IPs and cloud metadata URLs into every input parameter.
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