What OWASP Top 10 Means for Your Application

The OWASP Top 10 is a standard ranking of the most critical security risks for web applications, published by the Open Web Application Security Project. It is updated periodically based on real vulnerability data from thousands of applications. If you build software that handles user data, processes payments, or exposes an API, these risks apply to you. This guide explains each category in practical terms and shows how to address it.

Overview

ByteHide Radar covers all 10 categories through SAST scanning. For categories that involve runtime exploitation, Monitor adds active defense. For categories that involve code exposure, Shield provides binary protection. The table below maps each category to the relevant ByteHide module:

A01: Broken Access Control

What it is: The application fails to properly enforce what authenticated users are allowed to do. A regular user can access admin pages, modify other users' data, or escalate their privileges.

Real example: An API endpoint /api/users/123/profile returns user 123's data. An attacker changes the ID to /api/users/456/profile and gets another user's data. The server does not verify that the authenticated user is allowed to access user 456's profile.

How Radar helps: Radar's SAST engine identifies patterns where authorization checks are missing on data access operations, where user-supplied IDs are used without ownership verification, and where role checks are inconsistent across endpoints. See SAST Overview.

How Monitor helps: For .NET applications, Monitor detects anomalous access patterns at runtime, such as a user systematically enumerating IDs or accessing resources outside their normal scope.

A02: Cryptographic Failures

What it is: Sensitive data is transmitted or stored without proper encryption. This includes using weak algorithms, hardcoding encryption keys, transmitting data over HTTP instead of HTTPS, or storing passwords in plaintext.

Real example: A configuration file contains connectionString = "Server=db;Password=admin123" in plaintext. Anyone with access to the file or the binary can read the database credentials.

How Radar helps: Radar detects hardcoded secrets, weak hashing algorithms (MD5, SHA1 for passwords), missing TLS configuration, and insecure cryptographic patterns. See Secret Scanning.

How Shield helps: Shield encrypts all string constants in the compiled binary. Even if an attacker decompiles the application, encrypted connection strings and API keys are not readable through static analysis. See Constant Encryption (.NET) or String Encryption (Android).

Additional step: Replace hardcoded credentials with ByteHide Secrets for centralized, encrypted credential management.

A03: Injection

What it is: Untrusted data is sent to an interpreter (SQL database, shell, LDAP, etc.) as part of a command or query. The attacker's data is executed as code instead of being treated as data.

Real example: A login form sends the username directly into a SQL query: SELECT * FROM users WHERE name = ' + username + '. An attacker enters ' OR '1'='1 and bypasses authentication.

How Radar helps: Radar's SAST engine traces data flow from user input to dangerous sinks (SQL queries, shell commands, file operations, LDAP queries). It detects SQL injection, NoSQL injection, XSS, command injection, LDAP injection, and path traversal patterns. See SAST Overview.

How Monitor helps: For .NET applications, Monitor intercepts data at the application layer and blocks injection attempts in real time with full application context. Unlike a WAF, Monitor understands the data flow inside the application.

A04: Insecure Design

What it is: The application's architecture has fundamental security flaws that cannot be fixed by writing better code. Missing rate limiting, no defense in depth, lack of input validation strategy, or absence of security requirements in the design.

Real example: A password reset flow sends a 4-digit code via SMS with no rate limiting. An attacker brute-forces all 10,000 combinations in minutes.

How Radar helps: Radar identifies design-level patterns like missing rate limiting, absence of CSRF tokens, lack of input validation on critical endpoints, and insecure default configurations. See SAST Overview.

Beyond tools: Insecure design requires architectural changes. No scanner can fully solve this. Use Radar's findings as a starting point, then review the flagged areas with your team to address the underlying design gaps.

A05: Security Misconfiguration

What it is: The application, framework, or infrastructure is configured with insecure defaults. This includes exposed debug endpoints, verbose error messages, unnecessary features enabled, default credentials, and missing security headers.

Real example: An ASP.NET application runs in production with ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Development, exposing the developer exception page with full stack traces and source code to anyone who triggers an error.

How Radar helps: Radar detects common misconfiguration patterns: debug mode enabled in production, missing security headers (HSTS, CSP, X-Frame-Options), exposed admin interfaces, and overly permissive CORS settings. See SAST Overview.

A06: Vulnerable and Outdated Components

What it is: The application uses libraries, frameworks, or dependencies with known security vulnerabilities. This includes direct dependencies and transitive dependencies (dependencies of dependencies).

Real example: An application uses log4j 2.14.1, which is vulnerable to CVE-2021-44228 (Log4Shell), allowing remote code execution through a crafted log message.

How Radar helps: Radar's SCA (Software Composition Analysis) engine scans your dependency manifests (package.json, *.csproj, requirements.txt, go.mod, pom.xml, Gemfile, Cargo.toml, composer.json) against the CVE database. It identifies vulnerable packages, their severity, and recommends safe upgrade versions. See SCA Documentation and Supported Ecosystems.

A07: Identification and Authentication Failures

What it is: The application has weak authentication mechanisms. This includes allowing brute-force attacks, using weak password policies, improper session management, or exposing session tokens in URLs.

Real example: A login endpoint has no rate limiting or account lockout. An attacker uses a credential stuffing tool with a list of known email/password pairs from previous breaches and gains access to accounts where users reused passwords.

How Radar helps: Radar detects weak authentication patterns: missing account lockout, session IDs in URLs, insecure session configuration, weak password policies, and missing multi-factor authentication on sensitive operations.

How Monitor helps: For .NET applications, Monitor detects authentication anomalies at runtime, including repeated failed login attempts and credential stuffing patterns.

A08: Software and Data Integrity Failures

What it is: The application does not verify the integrity of software updates, critical data, or CI/CD pipelines. This includes using unsigned packages, relying on CDNs without integrity checks, and allowing deserialization of untrusted data.

Real example: A JavaScript application loads a script from a CDN without a Subresource Integrity (SRI) hash. If the CDN is compromised, the attacker's code runs in every user's browser.

How Radar helps: Radar detects insecure deserialization patterns, missing integrity checks on external resources, and CI/CD pipeline configurations that allow unsigned artifacts.

How Shield helps: Shield's anti-tamper protections detect when the application binary has been modified after protection. If an attacker patches the APK, IPA, or DLL and repackages it, the integrity check fails. See Anti-Tamper (Android) or Tamper Detection (iOS).

How Monitor helps: Monitor validates application integrity at runtime, detecting binary modifications, code injection, and hooking attempts.

A09: Security Logging and Monitoring Failures

What it is: The application does not log security-relevant events, does not monitor for suspicious activity, or does not have an incident response process. Attacks go undetected for days, weeks, or months.

Real example: A web application has no logging for failed login attempts. An attacker brute-forces accounts over several weeks. No one notices until users report unauthorized access.

How Radar helps: Radar identifies code paths where security events (authentication, authorization, data access, configuration changes) are not logged.

How to address it: Implement structured logging with ByteHide Logs. Logs provides centralized, searchable logging with real-time filtering and alerts. Available for .NET, JavaScript, Java, Go, and Python.

A10: Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)

What it is: The application fetches a remote resource based on a user-supplied URL without validating the destination. An attacker can make the server send requests to internal services, cloud metadata endpoints, or other systems that are not publicly accessible.

Real example: A PDF generation endpoint accepts a URL parameter: /generate-pdf?url=https://example.com. An attacker submits /generate-pdf?url=http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/ and retrieves AWS instance metadata, including IAM credentials.

How Radar helps: Radar detects SSRF patterns where user input flows into HTTP client calls, URL constructors, or file access operations without allowlist validation.

How Monitor helps: For .NET applications, Monitor can detect and block requests to internal network ranges and cloud metadata endpoints originating from user-controlled input.

OWASP Top 10 2025

OWASP released an updated Top 10 for 2025 with expanded categories. Radar covers the 2025 list as well. See the OWASP Top 10 2025 reference for the full mapping.

OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications

If your application integrates large language models, a separate risk list applies: prompt injection, data poisoning, model denial of service, and more. Radar covers the OWASP LLM Top 10 2025 for applications that use AI.

Next Steps

• Radar SAST Documentation - How Radar detects vulnerabilities in your code
• Radar SCA Documentation - Dependency scanning for known CVEs
• Setting Up a Security Pipeline - Automate OWASP coverage in your CI/CD
• Detecting and Responding to Runtime Attacks - How Monitor blocks exploitation in production