Securing Web Application : OWASP Top 10 Vulnerabilities

In today’s digital landscape, securing web applications is more critical than ever. The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) provides a list of the top 10 most critical security risks to web applications, known as the OWASP Top 10.

1. Injection Attack

Vulnerability : Injection flaws, such as SQL, NoSQL, and LDAP injection, occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command or query. This can lead to unauthorized access to data or even the complete compromise of the system.

Mitigation:

• Use parameterized queries or prepared statements provided by Spring Data JPA to prevent SQL injection.
• Avoid dynamic queries built from user inputs. Instead, use repositories or criteria queries.
• Validate and sanitize all inputs before processing them.

2. Broken Authentication

Vulnerability : Broken authentication refers to flaws that allow attackers to compromise passwords, session tokens, or keys, and assume other users’ identities.

Mitigation :

• Implement strong authentication mechanisms, such as using Spring Security with bcrypt for password encoding.
• Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) wherever possible.
• Ensure proper session management, including secure, HttpOnly, and SameSite cookies, and enforce session expiration.