Top 10-2017 Introduction

Welcome to the OWASP Top 10 2017! This major update adds two new vulnerability categories for the first time: (1) Insufficient Attack Detection and Prevention and (2) Underprotected APIs. We made room for these two new categories by merging the two access control categories (2013-A4 and 2013-A7) back into Broken Access Control (which is what they were called in the OWASP Top 10 - 2004), and dropping 2013-A10: Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards, which was added to the Top 10 in 2010.

The OWASP Top 10 for 2017 is based primarily on 11 large datasets from firms that specialize in application security, including 8 consulting companies and 3 product vendors. This data spans vulnerabilities gathered from hundreds of organizations and over 50,000 real-world applications and APIs. The Top 10 items are selected and prioritized according to this prevalence data, in combination with consensus estimates of exploitability, detectability, and impact.

The primary aim of the OWASP Top 10 is to educate developers, designers, architects, managers, and organizations about the consequences of the most important web application security weaknesses. The Top 10 provides basic techniques to protect against these high risk problem areas – and also provides guidance on where to go from here.

Don’t stop at 10. There are hundreds of issues that could affect the overall security of a web application as discussed in the OWASP Developer’s Guide and the OWASP Cheat Sheet Series. These are essential reading for anyone developing web applications. Guidance on how to effectively find vulnerabilities in web applications is provided in the OWASP Testing Guide and the OWASP Code Review Guide.

Constant change. This Top 10 will continue to change. Even without changing a single line of your application’s code, you may become vulnerable as new flaws are discovered and attack methods are refined. Please review the advice at the end of the Top 10 in “What’s Next For Developers, Verifiers, and Organizations” for more information.

Think positive. When you’re ready to stop chasing vulnerabilities and focus on establishing strong application security controls, OWASP has produced the Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) as a guide to organizations and application reviewers on what to verify.

Use tools wisely. Security vulnerabilities can be quite complex and buried in mountains of code. In many cases, the most cost-effective approach for finding and eliminating these weaknesses is human experts armed with good tools.

Push left, right, and everywhere. Focus on making security an integral part of your culture throughout your development organization. Find out more in the Open Software Assurance Maturity Model (SAMM) and the Rugged Handbook.

Thanks to Aspect Security for initiating, leading, and updating the OWASP Top 10 since its inception in 2003, and to its primary authors: Jeff Williams and Dave Wichers.

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We’d like to thank the many organizations that contributed their vulnerability prevalence data to support the 2017 update, including these large data set providers:  Aspect Security Branding Brand EdgeScan Minded Security Softtek Veracode AsTech Consulting Contrast Security</li> iBLISS</li> Paladion Networks</li> Vantage Point</li> </ul>

For the first time, all the data contributed to a Top 10 release, and the full list of contributors, is publicly available.

We would like to thank in advance those who contribute significant constructive comments and time reviewing this update to the Top 10 and to: <ul> [mailto:neil.smithline@owasp.org Neil Smithline] (Autodesk)– For producing the wiki version of this Top 10 release</li> </ul> And finally, we’d like to thank in advance all the translators out there that will translate this release of the Top 10 into numerous different languages, helping to make the OWASP Top 10 more accessible to the entire planet