The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a worldwide group that focuses on the safety of web applications. Once every four years, the OWASP community publishes the OWASP Top 10 report, which details the most critical security issues pertaining to web applications. Although we will examine these flaws from the perspective of a PHP developer, the lessons learned here apply to all the apps, irrespective of the programming language utilized.
Table of Contents
1. Broken access control
The issue we ought to be paying the most attention to, as stated by the version of OWASP, is broken access control. The term “broken access control” refers to exactly what it sounds like: it describes the situation when the process by which we manage who can access our apps is incorrect.
Before marking a person logged in, you should always check that their username and password match what is stored in the database. This will help you avoid problems with access control that have been broken.
2. Cryptographic failures
In the past, faults in cryptographic protocols were referred to as “sensitive data exposure. Then it was changed to cryptographic failures” because the new term addresses multiple security issues. In contrast, the old term only addresses one of these issues.
Cryptographic failures refer to the inability to encrypt data successfully, which can frequently result in the disclosure of sensitive information. Hashing passwords with any algorithm other than those that were supposed to be slow is a cryptographic failure because other forms of hashes, such as MD5, are easy and rapid to brute force. The majority of cryptographic failures in PHP are connected to passwords.
3. Injection and Vulnerable Architecture
To this day, injection remains the Web’s most talked-about security problem. Passing user input to a database opens it up to injection attacks. The large number of programs that can access databases makes injection assaults a concern despite their ease of prevention.
4. Insufficient security measures and outdated components
Then, there’s the issue of insufficient security measures and outdated components. These two defects are distinct from the others, but they pose just as great a threat.
It’s important to remember that attackers will examine all parts of a program while looking for security flaws caused by improper configuration. They’ll try to log in using the administrator’s account, see password-protected pages, take advantage of known loopholes, etc. The only way out of this predicament is if the parts are regularly patched and upgraded to protect against new vulnerabilities. Outdated components frequently include serious flaws that, if exploited, can lead to a database breach and the exposure of sensitive data, server outages, etc.
5. Authentication Failures
The term “Broken Authentication” was once used to describe the risk of improper identification and authentication. When an app’s authentication system isn’t properly guarded, the app is open to attacks.
Conclusion
This article outlines the top 5 vulnerabilities that potentially jeopardize your PHP web apps. Some of these vulnerabilities are new to OWASP in 2021, while others have been moved around from the 2017 version. However, the same idea applies to all of them: they pose some danger and must be dealt with accordingly. We hope that the information presented here will assist you in making your software safer to use.
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