OWASP Top 10 Vulnerabilities Protection

What is the best way to protect against OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities?

OWASP is an umbrella organization with several projects under its wings. The OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set (CRS) is one of its flagship projects. CRS is a set of generic attack detection rules for use with ModSecurity or a compatible Web Application Firewall (WAF). The Core Rule Set aims to protect web applications from a wide range of security risks while minimizing false positives. This includes those described by the OWASP Top Ten.

The Core Rule Set runs on top of the extremely popular ModSecurity WAF engine. The ModSecurity engine allows administrators to write their own rules or rely on well-known commercial offerings from Atomicorp, Comoro, or Trustwave Spiderlabs. Unlike the commercial offerings, the OWASP CRS are more generic in nature and cover a much larger set of applications from a broader attack surface. This means that the OWASP CRS protects you from generic attacks rather than individual-specific known exploits. For example, there are no rules for all known SQL injection attacks but a small set of rules protecting your application from any attack that looks like an SQL injection attack. This provides significantly enhanced coverage for Zero Day and other unknown attacks.

The most striking benefit of OWASP CRS is that a generic SQL injection rule protects applications from new and unknown SQL injections as well, or at least with a very high probability. This provides defense even when a new exploit comes out or a new CVE is published.

The CRS will provide protection while the application is upgraded or the required software patch is implemented. That means ModSecurity and CRS serve as the first line of defense.

What are the OWASP Top 10 Vulnerabilities?

The vulnerabilities identified in the OWASP Top 10 – 2025 edition are as follows:

A01. Broken Access Control

Many applications don’t enforce access control on application resources after a user session has been authenticated. This can lead to vulnerabilities due to poor configuration, which can lead to data being exposed to users who shouldn’t get access. Internal application checks and verification should be used for all access to sensitive data, and not the assumption that an authenticated session is allowed access.

A02. Security Misconfiguration

This is a very wide catch-all section that covers a variety of scenarios, including the application of latest security patches, default enablement of unnecessary features, use of default passwords and the use of default accounts to mitigate.

A03. Software Supply Chain Failures

This is a new addition but it was previously part of the 2013 Top 10 as "A9 Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities." Software supply chain failures occur when the software build, distribution, or update process breaks down or is compromised, often due to vulnerabilities or malicious changes in third-party code, tools, or dependencies.

A04. Cryptographic Failures

This vulnerability dropped from #2 to #4 and highlights why sensitive data such as financial, healthcare and PII must be protected both in-transit and at rest and how it can be exposed by encryption errors or lack of encryption.

A05. Injection

This is when an attacker sends rogue content to a web application interpreter causing the interpreter to execute authorized commands. They can then run malicious code in the application context and so gain access to sensitive data or protected areas.

A06. Insecure Design

This is category dropped from #4 to #6. It covers design and architectural flaws. Solutions include integrating security in all modeling and planning from the start of the software development process.

A07. Authentication Failures

Incorrect implementation of authentication schemes and session management can allow unauthorized users to assume the identities of valid users.

A08. Software or Data Integrity Failures

Data security continues to be a primary concern. The category covers the integrity of software updates, critical application data and CI/CD pipelines, where an attacker will tamper with them but the loss of integrity is undetected.

A09. Security Logging & Alerting Failures

Many systems are not monitored well enough and as a result attacks and data losses go undetected for prolonged periods of time. This allows attackers to continue to exploit weaknesses in systems, and possibly use undetected flaws in one application to attack others.

A10. Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions

This new category in the 2025 list includes 24 Common Weakness Enumerations (CWEs) covering improper error handling, logical errors, fail-open behavior, and other issues arising from abnormal system conditions.

Frequently Asked Questions