OWASP Top 10 2026: The Complete Guide to Web Application Vulnerabilities

The OWASP Top 10 remains the gold standard for understanding web application security risks. As we enter 2026, the threat landscape continues to evolve, with new attack vectors emerging and familiar vulnerabilities taking on new forms. Understanding these risks is crucial for protecting your applications.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll examine each of the OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities and show how WafWay provides protection against all of them.

What is OWASP Top 10?

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10 is a regularly updated report outlining the most critical security risks to web applications. It serves as an awareness document and represents a broad consensus about the most critical security risks.

The OWASP Top 10 for 2026

1. Broken Access Control

Moving from fifth position to first in recent years, broken access control is now the most common vulnerability. It occurs when users can act outside their intended permissions.

Common issues include:

• Violation of least privilege or deny by default
• Bypassing access control checks by modifying URLs or API requests
• Insecure direct object references (IDOR)
• Missing access control for POST, PUT, and DELETE

WafWay detects and blocks access control bypass attempts, including parameter tampering and forced browsing attacks.

2. Cryptographic Failures

Previously known as "Sensitive Data Exposure," this category focuses on failures related to cryptography that lead to exposure of sensitive data.

Protection strategies:

• Encrypt all sensitive data at rest and in transit
• Use strong, up-to-date algorithms and protocols
• Disable caching for responses with sensitive data
• Never use deprecated hash functions like MD5 or SHA1

3. Injection

Injection attacks remain critically dangerous. An application is vulnerable when user-supplied data is not validated, filtered, or sanitized.

Types of injection attacks:

• SQL Injection
• NoSQL Injection
• OS Command Injection
• LDAP Injection
• Expression Language Injection

WafWay's detection engine includes 200+ injection attack signatures and uses pattern matching to identify and block these attacks in real-time.

4. Insecure Design

A new category focusing on risks related to design flaws. Insecure design cannot be fixed by perfect implementation—security must be built in from the start.

Key practices:

• Establish secure development lifecycle
• Use threat modeling for critical flows
• Integrate security requirements in design
• Use secure design patterns

5. Security Misconfiguration

This includes missing security hardening, improperly configured permissions, unnecessary features enabled, and default accounts unchanged.

Common misconfigurations:

• Default credentials left unchanged
• Unnecessary features or services enabled
• Error handling revealing stack traces
• Security settings not set to secure values

WafWay provides security headers management and blocks information disclosure through error messages.

6. Vulnerable and Outdated Components

Using components with known vulnerabilities can undermine application defenses. This includes OS, web/application servers, libraries, and frameworks.

Best practices:

• Remove unused dependencies and features
• Continuously inventory component versions
• Monitor for vulnerabilities in components
• Obtain components from official sources

7. Identification and Authentication Failures

Confirmation of the user's identity, authentication, and session management is critical. Weaknesses here can be exploited by attackers.

WafWay protections:

• Rate limiting on authentication endpoints
• Brute force attack detection and blocking
• Credential stuffing protection
• Session fixation prevention

8. Software and Data Integrity Failures

This category focuses on making assumptions about software updates, critical data, and CI/CD pipelines without verifying integrity.

Protection measures:

• Use digital signatures to verify software
• Ensure libraries are from trusted repositories
• Use software composition analysis tools
• Implement review process for code changes

9. Security Logging and Monitoring Failures

Without logging and monitoring, breaches cannot be detected. This was formerly part of "Insufficient Logging & Monitoring."

WafWay provides comprehensive logging of all security events, real-time alerting, and integration with SIEM systems for enterprise users.

10. Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)

SSRF flaws occur when a web application fetches a remote resource without validating the user-supplied URL. This can be exploited to access internal systems.

Prevention strategies:

• Sanitize and validate all client-supplied input data
• Enforce URL schema, port, and destination whitelist
• Disable HTTP redirections
• Use network segmentation

WafWay detects and blocks SSRF attempts by analyzing request patterns and blocking suspicious internal network access attempts.

How WafWay Protects Against OWASP Top 10

WafWay is specifically designed to protect against the OWASP Top 10:

• 700+ Attack Signatures: Comprehensive detection rules covering all OWASP categories
• Real-time Blocking: Malicious requests are blocked before reaching your application
• Rate Limiting: Protect against brute force and enumeration attacks
• Security Headers: Automatic security header injection
• Detailed Logging: Complete audit trail for compliance
• Custom Rules: Create application-specific protection rules

Conclusion

The OWASP Top 10 provides essential guidance for securing web applications. However, understanding the risks is only the first step—you need the right tools to protect against them.

WafWay provides enterprise-grade protection against all OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities in an easy-to-deploy, self-hosted solution. Visit www.wafway.com to learn how WafWay can help you achieve OWASP compliance and protect your applications from modern threats.