The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) maintains a regularly updated list of the ten most critical security risks facing web applications. This list serves as a standard awareness document for developers and security professionals worldwide.
Understanding and addressing each of these risks is essential for building secure web applications. ClearAudit's Application Security scan checks for OWASP Top 10 compliance as part of its 50+ automated security checks.
A01:2021 – Broken Access Control
Access control enforces policy such that users cannot act outside of their intended permissions. When access controls fail, attackers can access unauthorized functionality and data. This was the most common vulnerability category in the 2021 OWASP data, found in 94% of applications tested.
Prevention Strategies
Implement role-based access control (RBAC) consistently
Deny access by default — require explicit grants
Log access control failures and alert administrators
Rate-limit API and controller access to minimize automated attacks
Invalidate server-side sessions after logout
Use JWT tokens with proper expiration and validation
How ClearAudit Detects This
ClearAudit's scan checks for exposed admin panels, directory traversal vulnerabilities, and insecure direct object references visible from the outside. The Infrastructure scan also flags missing rate limiting that could enable automated access control brute-forcing.
A02:2021 – Cryptographic Failures
Previously known as "Sensitive Data Exposure," this risk focuses on failures related to cryptography that lead to exposure of sensitive data. Weak encryption algorithms, expired certificates, and missing HTTPS are all common examples.
Prevention Strategies
Classify data processed, stored, or transmitted by your application
Use TLS 1.3 for all data in transit — ClearAudit's Network & Transport scan specifically validates this
Use AES-256 for data at rest
Never use deprecated algorithms like MD5, SHA-1, or DES
Implement proper key management
How ClearAudit Detects This
The Network & Transport scan validates your SSL/TLS certificate, checks protocol versions, evaluates cipher suite strength, and verifies certificate chain completeness. It also checks for HSTS enforcement and flags any use of deprecated protocols like TLS 1.0 or 1.1.
A03:2021 – Injection
Injection flaws occur when an application sends untrusted data to an interpreter. SQL injection, NoSQL injection, OS command injection, and LDAP injection are all common variants. A successful injection attack can result in complete database compromise.
Prevention Strategies
Use parameterized queries or prepared statements — never concatenate user input into queries
Use positive server-side input validation
Escape special characters using context-specific encoding
Use LIMIT and other SQL controls to prevent mass disclosure
Implement Content-Security-Policy headers to prevent inline script injection — ClearAudit's Application Security scan checks for proper CSP implementation
A04:2021 – Insecure Design
Insecure design represents a broad category of weaknesses arising from missing or ineffective control design. Unlike implementation bugs, design flaws can't be fixed with better code — they require architectural changes.
Prevention Strategies
Establish a secure development lifecycle with threat modeling
Use abuse case testing — think about how attackers would misuse each feature
Segregate tiers between system and network layers
Limit resource consumption by user or service
A05:2021 – Security Misconfiguration
Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue in real-world applications. This includes insecure default configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information.
Prevention Strategies
Implement a repeatable hardening process for all environments
Remove unused features, components, and documentation
Review and update configurations regularly
Implement all recommended HTTP security headers — ClearAudit checks for Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy, and Permissions-Policy
How ClearAudit Detects This
The Application Security scan checks for all recommended security headers, while the Infrastructure scan detects server information disclosure, default error pages, and unnecessary exposed services.
A06:2021 – Vulnerable and Outdated Components
Components like libraries, frameworks, and other software modules run with the same privileges as the application. If a vulnerable component is exploited, it can facilitate serious data loss or server takeover.
Prevention Strategies
Remove unused dependencies — every dependency is a potential attack vector
Continuously inventory component versions
Monitor sources like CVE and NVD for vulnerabilities
Only obtain components from official sources over secure links
Subscribe to security advisories for the components you use
How ClearAudit Detects This
ClearAudit's Infrastructure scan performs technology fingerprinting to identify your server software, frameworks, and libraries, then checks for known CVEs against those specific versions.
A07:2021 – Identification and Authentication Failures
Confirmation of a user's identity, authentication, and session management is critical for protecting against authentication-related attacks. Weak passwords, credential stuffing, and improper session handling are all common issues.
Prevention Strategies
Implement multi-factor authentication
Never ship with default credentials
Implement password strength checking against the top 10,000 most common passwords
Limit failed login attempts with progressive delays and account lockout
Use a server-side, secure, built-in session manager that generates a new random session ID after login
A08:2021 – Software and Data Integrity Failures
This relates to code and infrastructure that does not protect against integrity violations, such as using plugins, libraries, or modules from untrusted sources, insecure CI/CD pipelines, and auto-update mechanisms without integrity verification.
Prevention Strategies
Use digital signatures to verify software or data integrity
Ensure libraries and dependencies are from trusted repositories
Use a software supply chain security tool like Dependabot or Snyk
Implement a review process for code and configuration changes
Verify that your CDN and external scripts use Subresource Integrity (SRI) hashes
A09:2021 – Security Logging and Monitoring Failures
Without logging and monitoring, breaches cannot be detected. Insufficient logging, detection, monitoring, and active response means attackers can pivot, persist, and extract data for weeks or months without detection.
Prevention Strategies
Log all authentication events, access control failures, and input validation failures
Ensure logs have sufficient context for forensic analysis
Establish effective monitoring with real-time alerts
Create and test an incident response plan
A10:2021 – Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)
SSRF flaws occur when a web application fetches a remote resource without validating the user-supplied URL, allowing attackers to coerce the application to send crafted requests to unexpected destinations.
Prevention Strategies
Sanitize and validate all client-supplied URLs
Enforce URL schema, port, and destination with a positive allow list
Don't send raw responses to clients
Disable HTTP redirections
Using ClearAudit for OWASP Compliance
ClearAudit's automated security audit checks your application against the OWASP Top 10 as part of its Application Security scan. Each finding is mapped to the relevant OWASP category, with a severity rating and specific remediation steps.
After the scan, you can use the AI-generated fix prompt to paste directly into your AI coding tool and fix every issue automatically. Then rescan to verify your improvements and display your upgraded security grade with the ClearAudit trust badge.
Automate your OWASP compliance checks — Run a ClearAudit scan to see how your application measures up against the OWASP Top 10.