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In the Target data breach of 2013, attackers were able to steal the credit card information of 40 million customers. In 2020, the SolarWinds supply chain attack compromised the software update process, allowing attackers to inject malicious code into the company’s software, which was then distributed to thousands of customers. Software and Data Integrity Failures occur when an application fails to protect against unauthorized changes to software or data.

Software and Data Integrity Failures

To mitigate this threat, it’s essential to implement robust security controls, such as access controls, data encryption, and regular security audits. Additionally, ensure that cloud storage providers comply with relevant security standards and regulations, such as GDPR and HIPAA. APIs often have outdated, undocumented, or shadow endpoints that organizations fail to manage or protect.

Security Fundamentals

Insecure design includes all vulnerabilities from insufficient consideration of security during the design and architecture of the software. Businesses, eager to harness the potential of LLMs and Generative AI are rapidly integrating them into their operations and client facing offerings. In this attack, malicious actors can exploit functionality in a web application that accept user input for requests or URLs. They can direct the server to make requests to unauthorized internal services by manipulating the inputs. 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.

NHIs are no longer just peripheral elements in technology systems; they are core components of modern IT infrastructures. From handling data analytics to managing customer interactions, NHIs enhance efficiency but also introduce potential vulnerabilities due to their often opaque and automated nature. In order to understand what broken access control is, first we need to understand what access control is. By following these recommendations, you can significantly improve the security of your web applications and reduce the risk of cyberattacks. In 2019, Facebook disclosed that millions of user passwords were stored in plain text, making them vulnerable to unauthorized access.

• OWASP has 32,000 volunteers around the world who perform security assessments and research.
• Its programs include community-led open-source software projects and local and global conferences, involving hundreds of chapters worldwide with tens of thousands of members.
• Mitigation techniques begin early on in the SDLC, well before the CI/CD pipeline begins execution.
• In addition to explaining the issues, the list also provides guidance for avoiding, detecting, and remediating these vulnerabilities.
• The world’s leading organizations rely on Splunk, a Cisco company, to continuously strengthen digital resilience with our unified security and observability platform, powered by industry-leading AI.

Kotter’s 8 Steps for Leading Change in Organizations

Nonetheless, it discusses how credentials tied to code repositories, logs, or configuration files and stored/transmitted through CI/CD environments can be compromised and abused to bypass MFA, move laterally, and more. OWASP emphasize more secure options such as OIDC to allow CI/CD pipelines to obtain short-lived dynamically generated tokens for authentication instead of static long-lived credentials. Some estimates peg that ratio even higher at 10 to 50 times the number of human identities in an organization. When we recognize that credentials remain the leading attack vector in security breaches, (as per Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report) we can see why this would be a problem.

A01:2021 – Broken Access Control

Connect with Kayly on LinkedIn for updates on her writing and professional endeavors. As technology continues to transform, so too will the threats your organization faces. Staying up to date on lists like the OWASP Top 10 is crucial for maintaining a robust defense.

Server-Side Request Forgery can be summed up as letting an attacker fire requests using your backend server. Besides hosting costs that may rise up, the main problem is that the attacker will benefit from your server’s level of accreditation. In a complex architecture, this means being able to target your internal private services using your own corrupted server. Navy and General Services Administration (GSA)/FedRAMP as well as time as a consultant in the private sector. Cybersecurity programs at Capitol Technology University and University of Maryland Global Campus.

• The OWASP Top 10 is a standard awareness document for developers and web application security.It represents a broad consensus about the most critical security risks to web applications.
• It’s about people being able to access other people’s accounts or people being able to access resources they are not allowed to.
• Security Misconfiguration occurs when security settings are not properly configured, leaving the application vulnerable to attacks.
• The 2017 risk Insecure Deserialization is now part of the 2021 Software and Data Integrity Failures category.

OWASP Top 10 for Large Language Model Applications (v1.

Access control is present in a web application in order to allow users to access only the parts they are authorized to, this should prevent one user to access another user sensitive data for instance. The list has changed over time, with some threat types becoming more of a problem to web applicationsand other threats becoming less of a risk as technologies change.The latest version was issued in 2021 and each category is summarized below. Security Misconfiguration occurs when security settings are not properly configured, leaving the application vulnerable to attacks.

This can include default configurations, unnecessary features, or improper permissions. Insecure Design refers to flaws in the design of an application that make it inherently vulnerable to attacks. This can include poor architectural decisions, lack of threat modeling, or failure to consider security during the design phase.

This issue may allow unauthorized users to perform actions above their intended access level, and they can have access to privileged activities such as account modification and administrative functions. Security Logging and Monitoring Failures, previously named “Insufficient Logging and Monitoring”, involves weaknesses in an application’s ability to detect security risks and respond to them. Security Misconfiguration is a lack of security hardening across the application stack. This can include improper configuration of cloud service permissions, enabling or installing features that are not required, and default admin accounts or passwords.

Explore The 2025 AI Security Solutions Landscape

As more organizations adopt microservices and cloud-based architectures, the use of APIs has skyrocketed. According to a report by Salt Security, API attacks increased by 348% in the first half of 2021. The OWASP Top 10 is evolving to address API-specific vulnerabilities, and organizations must prioritize API security in their development processes. Identification and Authentication Failures occur when an application fails to properly authenticate users or manage sessions.

This involves insecure code or data handling, leading to potential manipulation and untrusted information within the software lifecycle. OWASP, or the Open Worldwide Application Security Project, is an international non-profit focused on improving software security. Founded in 2001, OWASP is an open community with a membership in the tens of thousands to help organizations develop, obtain, maintain and manage trusted applications.

It supports many open-source projects and produces high-quality education resources, including the OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities list. OWASP discusses how NHIs, such as service accounts, API keys, and machine credentials, are fundamental to modern applications, services, authentication, and authorization. OWASP then provides example attack scenarios involving the risk of insecure authentication, such as deprecated OAuth flows, app passwords bypassing MFA, and legacy authentication protocols that don’t use modern security standards, such as OAuth. Due to this, third parties are often provided with API keys, access tokens, and SSH keys. These credentials can be used maliciously to impact environments, move laterally, introduce compromised code into the SDLC, and more.

In 2019, Capital One suffered a data breach that exposed the personal information of over 100 million customers. It’s owasp top 9 about people being able to access other people’s accounts or people being able to access resources they are not allowed to. This vulnerability mostly concerns backend developers who have to deal with sensitive personal identifiers (PII) or passwords. Design is actually not just about code but about the way we use our programming tools to produce software artifacts. You can quickly improve the security of your applications by limiting people’s ability to spam your POST endpoints, especially login and signup.