What is the OWASP Top 10 and how does it help secure web applications?

The OWASP Top 10 is a regularly updated list of the most critical web application security risks, providing guidance for developers and security professionals.\n\n**What OWASP Top 10 provides:**\n• **Risk awareness** - Highlights most common and dangerous vulnerabilities\n• **Prioritization** - Helps focus security efforts on critical issues\n• **Best practices** - Provides prevention and mitigation strategies\n• **Industry standard** - Widely adopted security baseline\n\n**OWASP Top 10 (2021 edition):**\n\n**1. Broken Access Control:**\n• **Risk** - Users can access unauthorized functionality or data\n• **Example** - Changing URL parameter to access other user accounts\n• **Prevention** - Implement proper authorization checks, principle of least privilege\n\n**2. Cryptographic Failures:**\n• **Risk** - Weak encryption or improper handling of sensitive data\n• **Example** - Storing passwords in plain text, using weak encryption algorithms\n• **Prevention** - Use strong encryption, secure key management, HTTPS everywhere\n\n**3. Injection:**\n• **Risk** - Malicious code injected into application queries or commands\n• **Example** - SQL injection: ' OR '1'='1' --\n• **Prevention** - Parameterized queries, input validation, least privilege database access\n\n**4. Insecure Design:**\n• **Risk** - Fundamental security flaws in application architecture\n• **Example** - Missing security controls, insecure design patterns\n• **Prevention** - Threat modeling, secure design principles, security requirements\n\n**5. Security Misconfiguration:**\n• **Risk** - Improper configuration of security settings\n• **Example** - Default passwords, unnecessary services enabled, verbose error messages\n• **Prevention** - Security hardening, configuration management, regular audits\n\n**6. Vulnerable and Outdated Components:**\n• **Risk** - Using components with known security vulnerabilities\n• **Example** - Outdated libraries, frameworks, or operating systems\n• **Prevention** - Inventory management, regular updates, vulnerability scanning\n\n**7. Identification and Authentication Failures:**\n• **Risk** - Weak authentication mechanisms or session management\n• **Example** - Weak passwords, session fixation, credential stuffing\n• **Prevention** - Multi-factor authentication, strong password policies, secure session management\n\n**8. Software and Data Integrity Failures:**\n• **Risk** - Code and infrastructure without integrity verification\n• **Example** - Unsigned updates, insecure CI/CD pipelines\n• **Prevention** - Digital signatures, secure update mechanisms, supply chain security\n\n**9. Security Logging and Monitoring Failures:**\n• **Risk** - Insufficient logging and monitoring of security events\n• **Example** - No audit trails, delayed incident detection\n• **Prevention** - Comprehensive logging, real-time monitoring, incident response procedures\n\n**10. Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF):**\n• **Risk** - Application fetches remote resources without validating user-supplied URL\n• **Example** - Accessing internal services through application\n• **Prevention** - Input validation, network segmentation, allowlist approach