Security testing is an assessment of the sensitivity of a software vulnerability to various attacks. What type of attacks? Mainly unauthorized breaches into the system with the aim of extracting data about users or getting confidential information. With the help of vulnerabilities present in the software code, attackers can achieve their objectives.  

What are the Top Software Vulnerabilities?

1. Injection 

Injection flaws are widespread, especially in legacy code. It can be SQL, XML insertion into LDAP, SQL, XPath or Os commands, NoSQL queries, SMTP headers, XML parsers, expression languages and ORM enquiries or the encrypted requests sent to the server database.

Code examination scanners may easily locate injection flaws. Injection leads to data loss or exposure to unauthorized parties, access denial, loss of accountability or a complete host takeover. The impact on business activities may vary based on the data and application needs.

2. Broken Authentication

A weak authentication vulnerability may allow cyber attackers to use automatic or manual media while trying to gain control of any account. A worse scenario is gaining complete control over the system. 

To compromise the whole system, gaining access to one or a few admin accounts would be enough. Such actions may lead to social security fraud, identity theft and money laundering. Sensitive information may also be disclosed. 

3. XML External Entities

An XML external entity application attack parses XML input. It occurs when XML input containing a reference to an external entity is processed by a poorly configured XML parser. By default, most of such parsers are vulnerable to XXE attacks. This is why the responsibility for ensuring that the application has no such vulnerability depends on the developer. 

4. Sensitive Data Exposure

Confidential data disclosure is one of the most common vulnerabilities. It consists of compromising data that should have been protected. Examples of sensitive data include credit card numbers, passwords, social security numbers, personal information and health data.

5. Security Misconfigurations 

Hackers are always searching for ways to break into the network and system of websites. Improperly configured security can facilitate the task. Some examples of what cyber attackers normally use to gain unauthorized access to your system: default configuration, corrected flaws, unprotected files, unnecessary services and unused pages.  

One of the most common webmasters drawbacks is the preservation of the default CMS settings. Modern CMS applications can be complex in terms of security for end users. The most common attacks are fully automated. Many of these attacks depend on the assumption that users make use of only default settings. This means that you can avoid many attacks by changing the defaults setting when installing CMS. For instance, some CMS applications allow users to make changes such as installing any extension they want and much more.

There are some settings that give you a chance to manage the user's information display and comments. File permission is another example of a default setting that can be improved. 

6. Broken Access Control

While ensuring the website security, access control means limiting access to pages or sections that visitors can visit. For instance, if you own an online store, you probably need access to the admin panel so as to set up a promotion or add new products. However, visitors visiting your website do not need access to the admin panel. 

If ordinary visitors can access your login page, your online store becomes fragile to attacks. This is a big problem for all popular content management systems (CMS). By default, they provide access to the admin panel from anywhere. 

7. Insecure Deserialization 

Every web developer must know that security researchers and cyber attackers will try to play with everything that interacts with their application from URLs to serialized objects.  

The serialization process converts objects to byte strings. The deserialization process converts byte strings to objects. An attacker can successfully deserialize an object, modify the object to assign an administrator role to it, and serialize it again. These actions can make the whole web application vulnerable. 

8. Cross-Site Scripting 

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is a widespread vulnerability that affects many web applications. XSS attacks inject client-side malicious scripts into a website and use the website as a distribution technique. The danger of XSS is that it allows an attacker to inject content into a website and modify the way it’s shown. This will cause the victim’s browser to execute the code provided by the attacker when the page loads. 

XSS is present in about two-thirds of all applications. Typically, such vulnerabilities require the user to initiate some type of interaction through social engineering or visiting a specific page. If the XSS vulnerability is not fixed, it can be dangerous for any website.

9. Components with Known Vulnerabilities 

Generally, it requires using open-source documents or components. This vulnerability is exploited by hackers who want to access documentation that’s openly used in a project. Most software includes some open source components. It makes third-party components an easy target for potential hackers. 

10. Insufficient Logging and Monitoring 

Registration and monitoring work together. Even though insufficient logging and monitoring are abstract to be a direct attack vector, they always affect the detection and response to each violation. If incidents with the server and web application are not tracked appropriately, you can easily skip the suspicious activity. If security threats are not properly recorded or the logs are difficult to access, then these drawbacks will be ignored. 

Conclusion 

Security testing is a type of app testing. It ensures whether sensitive and confidential data remains confidential at all times. Some security-related bugs can only be noticed by quality assurance security experts. 

In this article, we have discovered the top 10 software vulnerabilities. A predicted danger is a danger avoided. Do you need help with software vulnerabilities in order to protect your company from cyber attackers? If yes, reach out to the team of security experts at Vicarius today. 

Vicarius offers a vulnerability management software that targets cybersecurity officers and operators, as well as IT managers and operators from the U.S. market. You can make use of our product TOPIA for accurate cybersecurity and ensuring your assets are well-protected. You can check our product page to learn more about TOPIA.