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The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a nonprofit foundation that works to improve the security of software. Through community-led open source software projects, hundreds of local chapters worldwide, tens of thousands of members, and leading educational and training conferences, the OWASP Foundation is the source for developers and technologists to secure the web.

The Open Web Application Security Project Top 10 is a standard awareness document for developers and web application security. It represents a broad consensus about the most critical security risks associated with web applications.

Businesses are encouraged to adopt this document and start ensuring that their applications minimize these top 10 risks.

Using the OWASP Top 10 guidance is perhaps the most effective first step towards changing the software development culture within your organization into one that produces more secure code.

The document is comprised of 10 of the most prevalent concerns

Injection
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.

Broken Authentication
Application functions related to authentication and session management are often implemented incorrectly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users' identities temporarily or permanently.

Sensitive Data Exposure
Many web applications and APIs do not properly protect sensitive data, such as financial, healthcare, and PII. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data may be compromised without extra protection, such as encryption at rest or in transit, and requires special precautions when exchanged with the browser.

XML External Entities (XXE)
Many older or poorly configured XML processors evaluate external entity references within XML documents. External entities can be used to disclose internal files using the file URI handler, internal file shares, internal port scanning, remote code execution, and denial of service attacks.

Broken Access Control
Restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do are often not properly enforced. Attackers can exploit these flaws to access unauthorized functionality and/or data, such as access to other users' accounts, view sensitive files, modify other users' data, change access rights, etc.

Security Misconfiguration
Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a result of insecure default configurations, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information. Not only must all operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications be securely configured, but they must be patched/upgraded in a timely fashion.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
XSS flaws occur whenever an application includes untrusted data in a new web page without proper validation or escaping, or updates an existing web page with user-supplied data using a browser API that can create HTML or JavaScript. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the victim's browser which can hijack user sessions, deface web sites, or redirect the user to malicious sites.

Insecure Deserialization
Insecure deserialization often leads to remote code execution. Even if deserialization flaws do not result in remote code execution, they can be used to perform attacks, including replay attacks, injection attacks, and privilege escalation attacks.

Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities
Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules, run with the same privileges as the application. If a vulnerable component is exploited, such an attack can facilitate serious data loss or server takeover. Applications and APIs using components with known vulnerabilities may undermine application defences and enable various attacks and impacts.

Insufficient Logging & Monitoring
Insufficient logging and monitoring, coupled with missing or ineffective integration with incident response, allows attackers to further attack systems, maintain persistence, pivot to more systems, and tamper, extract, or destroy data. Most breach studies show time to detect a breach is over 200 days, typically detected by external parties rather than internal processes or monitoring.

Assessments are priced based on the size of the relevant engagement, understanding the drivers behind the assessment helps us build a statement of works that fits our client's requirements.

For instance, a brochure wear application with hardly any rich features is likely to take fewer man-days to complete than, say a feature-rich e-commerce application.

The statement of works will describe the total man-days required to fulfil the engagement, priced per man day.

The simplest and most accurate method of scoping an application in our experience is to simply go through the application. A remote session with our clients guiding us through their application gives us a far better insight into its purpose and how it is used.

Our clients know their applications far better than we do and it allows Laneden to further engage and understand their requirements and drivers.

Once our consultants have navigated the application, utilising their years of experience they are able to make an accurate judgment on the number of days it would require to complete the assessment.