Almost all applications have some form of software vulnerability, according to a report published this week by software security company Synopsys.
Synopsys tests software for its clients, both without any access to the application at all and with valid user credentials. It ran 3,900 software tests on 2,600 target applications and systems and found 97% exhibiting some form of vulnerability.
More than a third of the vulnerabilities were high-risk, allowing attackers to access application resources and data, said Synopsys' “2021 Software Vulnerability Snapshot” report. It also found 6% were critical, meaning that they would allow attackers to access sensitive information.
The most common high-risk vulnerability was cross-site scripting, at 28%, followed by a failure to rate-limit login attempts, which renders the application open to brute force attacks.
The top critical vulnerabilities stemmed from SQL injection attacks, which allow attackers to manipulate the back-end database by inserting SQL commands into the application interface. These vulnerabilities have existed since the early days of web applications and frequently make the OWASP Top 10, which is a list of the most common security flaws found in web applications and is updated roughly every four years.
The vulnerabilities found in the report mapped closely to those detailed in the 2021 edition of the OWASP Top 10. Three in four matched those on the OWASP list.
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Synopsys warned that even lower-risk vulnerabilities can be dangerous. "For example, verbose server banners — found in 49% of the tests — provide critical information such as server name, type, and version number that could allow attackers to perform targeted attacks on specific technology stacks," it said.
The report, which ran analysis, including penetration tests and static analysis, made some recommendations to help companies avoid the fallout from attacks. It advised them to implement content security policies protecting against attacks that could access data in the application without authorization. It found missing or inadequate policies in 77% of the tests.
The report also recommended a software bill of materials to detail third-party libraries used in applications and assess their security. Almost one in five tests revealed applications using vulnerable third-party libraries.
