Technology is a mainstay in every part of our daily lives, and software applications are at the heart of it all. We use them to connect on social media, manage our finances, shop online, and even control smart devices in our homes. But as apps become more powerful and interconnected, they also become bigger targets for cybercriminals.
In 2024, security threats aren’t just a possibility—they’re a constant reality. Hackers are getting smarter, attacks are getting more sophisticated, and the fallout from a breach can be massive. According to the CrowdStrike 2024 State of Application Security Report, 70 percent of critical incidents take longer than 12 hours to resolve. That’s a lot of time for a threat actor to wreak a lot of damage.
In this article, we’ll break down the biggest application security vulnerabilities, real-world examples of what can go wrong, and steps IT professionals can take to keep systems safe.
What is an Application Vulnerability?
At its core, an application vulnerability is a flaw or weakness in software that undermines its security. These gaps can range from simple coding mistakes to deep design flaws, giving attackers opportunities to steal data, disrupt operations, or gain unauthorized access.
Interestingly, some vulnerabilities may fade over time as technology evolves, but many remain persistent threats that form the backbone of modern cyberattacks.
What are the Types of Application Security Vulnerabilities?
Below are the leading application security vulnerabilities with real-world examples;
Broken Access Control
Access control is what ensures users can only access what they’re authorized to see, modify, or do their jobs. Unfortunately, when this security measure fails, attackers can slip through the cracks and gain unauthorized access to sensitive data, manipulate user accounts, or even take over administrative functions.
According to OWASP, 94 percent of applications were tested for some form of broken access control, with an average incidence rate of 3.81 percent, and the most occurrences were in the contributed dataset, which had over 318K.
These kinds of breaches usually come from issues like poorly enforced permissions, missing authentication checks, or misconfigured systems. What should devs do? Best practices to prevent them include applying the principle of least privilege, enforcing role-based access control (RBAC), zero trust, and implementing negative permissions to explicitly deny access where needed.
Real-World Example of Broken Access Control
In May 2024, Ticketmaster announced it had suffered a massive cyberattack that exposed the personal and payment data of over 500 million users.
What happened?
Hackers (known as ShinyHunters, according to numerous reports) exploited a vulnerability in Ticketmaster’s customer service portal. Once they were inside, they extracted vast amounts of sensitive customer data, including names and email addresses, payment details, ticket purchase history, etc.
Despite Ticketmaster’s frantic efforts to quickly shut down the affected systems, the damage was done! Shortly after the breach, stolen data surfaced on dark web forums. And if that’s not enough, Ticketmaster is now facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit as of November 2024. This simply shows how badly neglecting application security vulnerabilities can affect reputation and finance.
Cryptographic Failures
Cryptography is the backbone of data security—it protects sensitive information from threat actors. But when encryption is weak, outdated, or mismanaged, it can leave data completely exposed. Cryptographic failures happen when applications use weak or obsolete encryption algorithms, mishandle cryptographic keys, making them easy to steal or misuse, and fail to encrypt sensitive data at all, leaving it vulnerable to attackers.
Cryptographic failures rank second on OWASP’s top 10 web application security risks, so these attacks are no joke. Data at rest and in transit should be encrypted with strong encryption protocols, cryptographic keys must be managed securely, and unnecessary sensitive data should not be stored, particularly if copies are available.
Real-World Example of Cryptographic Failure
About 31 million Internet Archive users were affected by a significant attack in October 2024. According to numerous reports, attackers exploited vulnerabilities in the web application, including a malicious JavaScript pop-up and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, exposing email addresses, usernames, and bcrypt-hashed passwords.
Injection Attacks
Injection attacks are one of the oldest and most dangerous security threats. The purpose of this attack is to manipulate applications by injecting malicious code into queries or commands. Sadly, the vulnerabilities are usually caused by incomplete validation of untrusted data that is passed to an interpreter, such as SQL, NoSQL, OS, or LDAP, without proper validation. Upon exploiting these vulnerabilities, attackers can run unauthorized commands, access sensitive data, and, in worst-case scenarios, take full control of the system.
Injection attacks can be prevented by parameterizing queries, implementing stored procedures, and enforcing strict input validation.
Real-World Examples of Injection Attacks
There was a devastating attack on the widely used Managed File Transfer (MFT) application MOVEit Transfer in 2023. The breach, caused by a SQL injection vulnerability, exposed the sensitive data of 77 million records from organizations and government agencies worldwide!
In late 2024, BeyondTrust’s Privileged Remote Access (PRA) and Remote Support (RS) solutions were exploited due to two major vulnerabilities. The most dangerous vulnerability, CVE-2024-12356 (CVSS 9.8), happened due to improper input sanitization and required no user interaction, making it alarmingly easy to exploit.
Insecure Design
Insecure design occurs when app developers don’t consider security from the start of the development process. Unfortunately, this can cause fundamental weaknesses that are hard (and expensive) to patch later. Insecure design can manifest in many ways, including a lack of authentication controls (e.g., unlimited login attempts), weak or missing security policies, and flawed workflows that expose sensitive data.
With the rise of agile development and DevOps, security needs to be "shifted left"—meaning it should be baked into the design process from day one, not treated as an afterthought.
Real-World Examples of Insecure Design Flaws
Many content management systems (CMS), including WordPress, don’t limit failed login attempts by default. This leaves them vulnerable to attacks like brute force, where hackers systematically try different password combinations until they gain access. To avoid this, users need to install third-party security extensions or perform manual configurations.
Another example that could pass as an insecure design happened in December 2024 when Chinese AI platform DeepSeek faced scrutiny when cloud security firm Wiz discovered a critical database leak exposing over one million records, including system logs, user prompts, and API tokens. The issue? Poor security design led to an exposed database, highlighting the risks of neglecting security in application development.
Read: Critical IDOR Vulnerability in LatePoint Plugin Exposes Sensitive Data
Security Misconfiguration
Security misconfigurations are one of the most common—and preventable—causes of data breaches. They occur when applications, servers, or databases are left with default settings, expose too much information, or lack proper security controls.
Many developers rely on default configurations provided by tools and services during development, but these settings often prioritize convenience over security. One major issue? Overly detailed error messages, such as debug logs and stack traces, can reveal sensitive system details like component versions, which attackers can exploit if those components have known vulnerabilities.
To prevent security misconfigurations, organizations should define appropriate security configurations, automate the deployment of those settings, regularly update and patch systems to address known vulnerabilities, and constantly audit security systems.
Example of Security Misconfiguration
Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) is one of the most widely used cloud storage platforms—but it has also been one of the most frequently misconfigured services, leading to countless data breaches. Some major incidents include:
A misconfigured S3 bucket exposing 50,000 U.S. patient records
Leaked data from over 80 U.S. municipalities, revealing government and citizen information.
Vulnerable and Outdated Components
Even if you write 100% secure code, your application can still be at risk—how? By using outdated and vulnerable components. If a software component is no longer maintained, unpatched, or contains serious flaws, it becomes a ticking time bomb for security breaches.
Considering that 90 percent of security professionals use three or more tools to detect and prioritize threats, it’s important to regularly check for any outdated component or tool that can pose vulnerabilities.
Hackers actively search for outdated components to exploit. Once they find a known vulnerability, they can take over servers, steal sensitive data, and compromise entire systems.
Just as technology evolves, so do threats. That’s why regular updates, security patching, and continuous security testing are important. Maintaining an inventory of all software components ensures that vulnerable dependencies don’t put your entire system at risk.
Real-World Examples of Vulnerable and Outdated Components Security Risk
In December 2024, cybersecurity experts urged Apple users to immediately update to iOS 18 due to a severe data-stealing bug. Many users delayed the update over concerns about Apple’s new AI features, but this left them exposed to an exploit that allowed unauthorized apps to access sensitive data without user consent.
Another example that comes to mind is the Equifax Data Breach of 2017 when Equifax failed to update Apache Struts, leaving a known vulnerability unpatched. This compromised 148 million Americans’ data, such as SSNs, driver’s licenses, and home addresses.
Identification and Authentication Failures
Weak or missing authentication in applications may allow threat actors to compromise passwords and session tokens, which ultimately gives them access to a victim’s account. To prevent this, applications must enforce strong authentication controls, like requiring complex, randomly generated passwords, implementing secure session management, eliminating default credentials, and using multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Example of Identification and Authentication Failures
One of the biggest authentication failures in recent years was the Microsoft Exchange Server hack. Attackers exploited a vulnerability known as ProxyLogon, allowing them to remotely execute code on vulnerable Exchange servers, install malware, steal sensitive data, and take complete control of affected systems.
Microsoft patched the flaw in March 2024 during the monthly patch circle, but by then, many organizations had already been compromised.
Insufficient Logging & Monitoring
If a cyberattack happens and no one notices, did it really happen? Unfortunately, in the world of cybersecurity, the answer is yes—and it’s disastrous. Poor logging and monitoring make security breaches harder to detect and investigate, allowing attackers to operate undetected for weeks or even months. To prevent cyberattacks—or respond effectively when they occur—application developers must enable high-quality, real-time logging, monitor logs continuously to detect threats, and use incident response tools to act on alerts.
Example of Insufficient Logging & Monitoring Vulnerability
In May 2024, Dell suffered a massive breach affecting 49 million customers—and shockingly, it could have been prevented with proper monitoring. A hacker known as Menelik infiltrated Dell’s company partner portal by creating fake partner accounts. He then launched a brute-force attack, sending over 5,000 requests per minute for nearly three weeks.
Despite this obvious anomaly, Dell’s systems failed to detect the attack in time. After 50 million requests, Menelik even emailed Dell himself to alert them of the vulnerability. While no financial details were leaked, hackers scraped sensitive customer data. Before long, stolen Dell customer data soon appeared on hacker forums.
Conclusion
With so many application security vulnerabilities to address, keeping systems safe is an ongoing challenge for organizations. Any company that develops or relies on applications must stay informed about these threats and understand their potential impact.
For application developers and security engineers, rigorous security testing should be a non-negotiable step before pushing applications to production.
At WebSec, we help you find the weak spots before cybercriminals do. Our advanced security assessments follow industry standards like OWASP and are tailored to your unique needs—whether evaluating an entire application or specific functional segments. Take the first step toward fortified protection with WebSec. Contact us now and let our experts secure your digital assets with precision and expertise.