What are application security vulnerabilities

Nearly every business and consumer in our computer-driven society develops, implements, or in some way uses software applications. So it is incumbent on the developers and providers of these applications to ensure they are safe from compromise or misuse by malicious actors. This is no easy matter. Today’s applications can be tremendously complex with many interdependencies and interconnected components.  And the pressure to deploy applications faster has resulted in shrinking software development and deployment cycles. It is all too easy to miss a vulnerability caused by a design flaw or imported from a third party.

As such, organizations developing and deploying applications need to adopt a comprehensive approach to discovering and remediating security vulnerabilities in their applications and throughout the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC).

What is a Security Vulnerability?

A security vulnerability is any weakness in a system that can be used by an attacker to violate the system’s security policies or controls. This means any weakness in application design, authentication mechanisms, or data handling that a bad actor can exploit to penetrate the system to gain unauthorized access, steal or manipulate data, or disrupt service.

Securing applications is a continual battle, as new vulnerabilities are discovered virtually every day. Web applications are especially susceptible because they operate over the internet where they are exposed to a greater number and variety of application threats.

Examples of security vulnerabilities

Several high-profile data breaches illustrate the damage that can be caused by an unremediated vulnerability.  In 2021 a vulnerability was discovered in the Log4j component of Apache’s logging library. Log4J is one of the most widely deployed open-source libraries in the world and is deeply embedded in the software supply chain. The vulnerability, if exploited, could have allowed cyber criminals to execute malicious code on any affected systems.

In 2023 criminals exploited a vulnerability in Progress Software’s MOVEit file transfer application. MOVEit is used by thousands of applications worldwide, and many organizations had customer and/or employee data stolen as a result of the application’s vulnerability.

In 2024 a vulnerability was discovered in Fortra’s GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer (MFT) software, allowing unauthorized users to create phony admin users and bypass authentication requirements.

The Difference Between Software Security and Application Security

Two terms used in discussing security vulnerabilities are “application security” and “software security.” In our view, software and application security are essentially synonymous  — all applications are software, after all. The difference is actually between software or application security and software development lifecycle (SDLC) security. Applications are just one type of software. Software or application security focuses on the development of the software or application. SDLC security encompasses everything involved in the development, including development environments, access controls to those environments, tools to test or deploy the software or application, and monitoring or measurement tools. That is the entire software ecosystem rather than the defined software entity that requires environments, tools, processes, and people to build it, all of which constitute the application or software attack surface and can be compromised by savvy attackers to cause catastrophic software breaches.

The Importance of Holistic Application Security

The statistics are alarming. In 2020 the average cost of a data breach was $3.86 million, with a staggering 82% of known vulnerabilities existing in application code. And in 2023, 91% of organizations experienced at least one software supply chain security incident. In addition to the monetary cost of a data breach, lost productivity and human resource consumption can be significant problems when an application is compromised, in addition to the potential reputational damage that could be caused by an AppSec incident.

It is therefore critical for organizations to take a proactive approach to application security across the entire SDLC, from design through deployment and active runtime. To meet accelerated deployment schedules, organizations need application security tools that fit seamlessly into software development cycles and CI/CD pipelines, and allow development teams to discover and mitigate potential threats before they are released in the wild. Furthermore, any triage or remediation efforts must be executed with a minimum level of disruption to development/deployment schedules.

Common Types of Application Security Vulnerabilities

There are so many opportunities for an application security vulnerability to find its way into an application that coming up with a list of common security vulnerabilities depends on how one looks at the application. The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) lists 10 specific vulnerabilities as described below. Here is a list of common application security vulnerabilities based on their long-term history of occurrence. Some of these known vulnerabilities have been around for more than 25 years.

• Backdoor in code:  a malicious code segment or backdoor into the software codebase that allows the attacker to maintain access and control over the system.
• Overpriviledged user account: a lateral movement tactic in which an attacker gains access to a user account with excessive privileges and uses those privileges to move laterally within a network.
• Common injection attacks: a web security vulnerability, such as SQL injection, that allows an attacker to execute arbitrary operating system commands on the server running an application.
• Sensitive information in logs: where system logs contain sensitive information such as personally identifiable information (PII), data tokens, credentials, etc.
• Cross-site scripting (XSS): occurs when an attacker uses an application to send malicious code to an unsuspecting end user. 
• Vulnerable CI/CD template: targets the templates used in the CI/CD pipeline configuration to modify these templates to include malicious code or configuration that can result in unauthorized access or data theft.
• Unencrypted data in transit: when data moving between two points over a network is exposed because it is not encrypted.
• Weak encryption: vulnerabilities in the encryption mechanism that fail to adequately protect sensitive data due to outdated algorithms, improper configurations, or insufficient key lengths.
• Unencrypted data at rest: when stored data is vulnerable because it is not encrypted.
• Weak authentication methods: allows unauthorized access to build environments or code repositories by exploiting vulnerabilities, such as weak passwords, in the authentication methods.

Top 10 Web Application Security Risks per OWASP

OWASP is a nonprofit foundation whose goal is to improve the security of software applications. OWASP was founded in 2021 and publishes a list of its top ten security risks every three to four years. The organization last published its top ten list in 2021, so we’re due for an update soon. The 2021 list is strikingly similar to the 2017 list. A few categories were combined and some moved up or down on the list. Three new categories were added: insecure design, software and data integrity, and server-side request forgery.

Here is the complete list. 

• A01:2021-Broken Access Control: 94% of applications were tested for some form of broken access control. The 34 Common Weakness Enumerations (CWEs) mapped to Broken Access Control had more occurrences in applications than any other category.
• A02:2021-Cryptographic Failures: The focus is on failures related to cryptography which often leads to sensitive data exposure or system compromise.
• A03:2021-Injection: 94% of the applications were tested for some form of injection. Cross-site Scripting is part of this category.
• A04:2021-Insecure Design: focuses on risks related to design flaws. 
• A05:2021-Security Misconfiguration: 90% of applications were tested for some form of security misconfiguration, including Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF). 
• A06:2021-Vulnerable and Outdated Components: third-party libraries, frameworks, or components within an application that have known vulnerabilities or are no longer supported by their developers.
• A07:2021-Identification and Authentication Failures:  includes Broken Authentication and CWEs that are more related to identification failures. 
• A08:2021-Software and Data Integrity Failures: focuses on making assumptions related to software updates, critical data, and CI/CD pipelines without verifying integrity.
• A09:2021-Security Logging and Monitoring Failures: when a system or application fails to adequately log and monitor important security events. 
• A10:2021-Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF): focuses on vulnerabilities that allow an attacker to trick a server into making unintended requests.

Assessing and Addressing Application Security Vulnerabilities

Most organizations designing and deploying software applications understand the importance of designing secure code and ensuring that security is an integral component of deployment and maintenance processes. However, IDC Research indicates that half of software developers are spending 19% of their time each week on security tasks, time that should be devoted to software development. Traditional AppSec security processes are simply unable to keep up with the rapidly changing and complex cybersecurity threat landscape.

It is important to remember that not every application security vulnerability discovered needs to be resolved immediately or even remediated. The average security team monitors 129 applications and receives over 118,000 alerts.  What’s needed for triage of these vulnerabilities is to determine which ones merit attention and prioritization. In assessing risk prioritization, three criteria that must be considered to decrease the risk of exploitation are reachability, exploitability, and business impact.

“Reachability” refers to the ability of an attacker to access the vulnerability through the code, an API, or some other part of the exploitation chain. If the vulnerability isn’t reachable, the risk is minimal.

“Exploitability” refers to the likelihood that an attacker can trigger the vulnerability. For instance, if a piece of code contains a vulnerability, but the application doesn’t use that code, that vulnerability is not a threat.

“Business impact” refers to the potential for and extent of impact to a business, should an attacker successfully reach and exploit a software vulnerability. If, for instance, the damage caused by a software attack would affect a non-production system that does not contain any sensitive data, the business impact is low or minimal. Vulnerability remediation, therefore, should be moved to a lower priority than another vulnerability that would impact a mission- or business-critical system or data.

Application Security Tools and Techniques

The tools available to AppSec teams to identify  security vulnerabilities in application development and deployment fall into four general categories: 

Static Application Security Testing (SAST):  

The goal of SAST is to probe application code in the design stage and identify vulnerabilities in a static state. SAST can be very comprehensive, analyzing every line of code, if desired.

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST): 

DAST tests the application in a running state, probing it in much the same way an attacker would. It can identify gaps or unforeseen outcomes that could have a downstream effect on risk management.

Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST): 

IAST combines SAST and DAST, testing applications while they are running. IAST tracks application behavior and sends an alert to the application owners or security testers when a vulnerability is detected.

Software Composition Analysis (SCA): 

SCA tracks and manages potential security vulnerabilities in open-source and third-party software. It scans code, analyzes all components of an application, and creates a software bill of materials (SBOM) that can be used to check for components with known vulnerabilities.

Application Security Posture Management (ASPM).

ASPM is an approach to application security that holistically helps organizations manage the security state of their application and development security by centralizing, correlating, and analyzing software-related data from multiple tools. This integration approach provides greater visibility, clarity, and manageability versus a typical application security program that stitches together numerous independent tools, multiple departments, and siloed processes. Rather than having each department address application security individually, ASPM removes the historical silos and consolidates tools, unifying application security testing (AST), software supply chain security (SSCS), and security posture management tools into a single management plane. What’s more, ASPM includes analysis of the centralized and correlated data to help AppSec teams make strategic decisions about vulnerability management and application risk. In short, it gives application developers and security teams the ability to continuously monitor applications, and prioritize, track, and fix issues across the SDLC with greater accuracy and efficiency.

Reduce Application Security Vulnerabilities with OX Security

OX Security’s mission is to allow AppSec and DevOps team to focus on the 5% of vulnerabilities that really matter. OX provides businesses the ability to combine disparate processes under one platform, helping practitioners make sense of it all. With a unification approach, security can be an enabler rather than an inhibitor for application development and deployment, from design through runtime. The OX Active ASPM Platform provides complete application security coverage, visibility, risk prioritization, automated response, and remediation across the entire software design lifecycle.