What is the OWASP Top 10?

The OWASP Top 10 is the most authoritative document on web application security risks. Published by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), it represents the consensus of security experts worldwide about the most critical vulnerabilities threatening web applications today.

For WooCommerce store owners, the OWASP Top 10 serves as a roadmap for prioritizing security efforts. Each category represents a class of vulnerabilities that could compromise your customer data, business operations, or regulatory compliance. Understanding these risks is the first step toward building a truly secure e-commerce platform.

What's Changed in the OWASP Top 10 for 2025

The 2025 release includes significant updates reflecting the evolving threat landscape. OWASP has maintained its focus on identifying root causes rather than symptoms, though the complexity of modern software engineering makes some overlap inevitable.

Broken Access Control maintains its position at #1 as the most serious application security risk. Access control enforces policies that prevent users from acting outside their intended permissions. When these controls fail, attackers can access unauthorized data or functionality.

Common Attack Scenarios:

• Accessing other users' accounts by modifying URL parameters
• Viewing or editing someone else's order history
• Elevating privileges to administrative functions
• API access without proper authentication (now includes SSRF)
• Manipulating metadata like JWT tokens or cookies

→ Read the full OWASP documentation

Security Misconfiguration has moved up significantly from #5 to #2, indicating its growing prevalence. This isn't surprising—as software engineering increasingly relies on configuration-driven behavior, the attack surface for misconfigurations grows proportionally.

Common Misconfigurations:

• Missing security patches or outdated software versions
• Unnecessary features enabled (ports, services, pages, accounts)
• Default accounts with unchanged passwords
• Overly detailed error messages revealing system information
• Improper HTTP security headers configuration
• Server permissions and directory settings allowing unauthorized access

→ Read the full OWASP documentation

This category expands significantly from the previous "Vulnerable and Outdated Components" to include the broader scope of compromises occurring within or across the entire ecosystem of software dependencies, build systems, and distribution infrastructure.

This category was overwhelmingly voted as a top concern in the OWASP community survey. While it has limited presence in collected vulnerability data, this is likely due to testing challenges rather than actual low prevalence. Notably, this category shows the highest average exploit and impact scores from CVE data.

Supply Chain Risk Areas:

• Compromised software packages and dependencies
• Malicious code injected into build pipelines
• Compromised update mechanisms
• Vulnerabilities in third-party libraries and components
• Unsigned or unverified software artifacts

→ Read the full OWASP documentation

While Cryptographic Failures has fallen from #2 to #4, it remains a critical concern. This category often leads to sensitive data exposure or complete system compromise. Poor cryptography implementation can undermine all other security measures.

Common Cryptographic Issues:

• Transmitting or storing sensitive data in clear text (HTTP, FTP, SMTP)
• Using old or weak cryptographic algorithms
• Default or weak cryptographic keys
• Missing or improper certificate validation
• Passwords stored without proper hashing or using weak hashing

Injection vulnerabilities occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command or query. Despite falling to #5, injection remains one of the most tested and exploited vulnerability classes, with the greatest number of CVEs associated with its 38 CWEs.

Types of Injection Attacks:

• SQL Injection: Low frequency but extremely high impact
• Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): High frequency with lower individual impact
• Command Injection: OS-level command execution
• LDAP Injection: Directory service manipulation
• XML/XXE Injection: External entity processing attacks

Insecure Design represents a broad category focused on risks related to design and architectural flaws. The drop from #4 to #6 indicates noticeable improvements in the industry related to threat modeling and secure design practices.

Unlike implementation bugs, insecure design flaws cannot be fixed with patches—they require fundamental architectural changes. This emphasizes the importance of security considerations from the very beginning of development.

Previously called "Identification and Authentication Failures," this category maintains its position at #7 with a slight name refinement. The increased use of standardized authentication frameworks appears to be having beneficial effects on occurrence rates.

Common Authentication Issues:

• Permitting brute force or automated credential stuffing attacks
• Allowing default, weak, or well-known passwords
• Missing or ineffective multi-factor authentication
• Exposing session IDs in URLs
• Not rotating session IDs after successful login
• Improperly invalidating session tokens during logout or idle periods

This category focuses on the failure to maintain trust boundaries and verify the integrity of software, code, and data artifacts at a lower level than Software Supply Chain Failures (A03). These vulnerabilities relate to assumptions about software updates, critical data, and CI/CD pipelines without verifying integrity.

Integrity Failure Examples:

• Applications relying on plugins, libraries, or modules from untrusted sources
• Insecure CI/CD pipelines allowing unauthorized code modifications
• Auto-update functionality without sufficient integrity verification
• Unsigned or unverified serialized objects
• Insecure deserialization vulnerabilities

Previously called "Security Logging and Monitoring Failures," the name change emphasizes the importance of alerting functionality. Great logging with no alerting is of minimal value in identifying security incidents. This category is always underrepresented in vulnerability data and was voted into position by community survey participants.

Critical Logging Requirements:

• Login attempts, failed logins, and high-value transactions are not logged
• Warnings and errors generate no, inadequate, or unclear log messages
• Logs are only stored locally and not sent to a centralized system
• No active monitoring or alerting on suspicious activities
• Insufficient logging of API and application activity for forensic analysis

Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions is a completely new category for 2025. This category contains 24 CWEs focusing on improper error handling, logical errors, failing open, and other related scenarios stemming from abnormal conditions that systems may encounter.

Exceptional Condition Issues:

• Verbose error messages revealing sensitive system information
• Security controls that "fail open" (grant access when errors occur)
• Improper handling of unexpected input or state conditions
• Race conditions in multi-threaded environments
• Uncaught exceptions leading to information disclosure

Protecting Your WooCommerce Store Against the OWASP Top 10

Conclusion: Stay Ahead of Evolving Threats

The OWASP Top 10 2025 release reflects the evolving landscape of web application security. The rise of Security Misconfiguration to #2 and the introduction of Software Supply Chain Failures and Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions highlight areas requiring increased attention.

For WooCommerce store owners, these findings reinforce the importance of:

• Vigilant plugin and theme management
• Proper server and application configuration
• Strong authentication and access controls
• Comprehensive logging and monitoring
• Regular security assessments

Security is not a one-time effort but an ongoing process. Stay informed about emerging threats, keep your systems updated, and don't hesitate to seek professional help when needed.