OWASP Top 10 Explained: The Most Common Web Application Vulnerabilities

OWASP Top 10 is a globally recognised list of the most critical security risks in web applications. The list is regularly updated by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) and is used as the foundation for security testing worldwide.

Broken Access Control is number one on the list. This means the application does not enforce access controls correctly — users can access data or functionality they should not have access to. Common examples include IDOR (Insecure Direct Object References), where a user can change an ID in the URL to view someone else's data.

Cryptographic Failures deals with errors in encryption and data protection. Sensitive data such as passwords, credit cards or personal information must be protected with strong encryption, both in transit (TLS) and at rest. Use of outdated algorithms or missing encryption are common findings.

Injection covers SQL injection, XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) and other forms of injection where malicious input is interpreted as commands. Prevention involves input validation, parameterised queries and output encoding.

Insecure Design is relatively new to the list and deals with fundamental design flaws — not implementation bugs, but a lack of security thinking in the architecture. Threat modelling and secure design principles are important.

Security Misconfiguration is the sixth most common vulnerability. Default configurations, unnecessary features enabled, missing security headers and outdated software fall under this category.

At Awareness Security, we systematically test for all OWASP Top 10 categories and more. Our AI-assisted testing ensures we cover all known vulnerability patterns, while manual validation catches the more subtle issues that require human understanding of business logic.

Want to know how your application scores against OWASP Top 10? Contact us for a security assessment.