Top OWASP Vulnerabilities Explained

The OWASP Top 10 is the industry's shorthand for the most critical web application security risks. Here's a fast tour of the heavy hitters and how a WAF helps.

Broken access control

The #1 risk: users acting outside their intended permissions, viewing other users' records, escalating to admin. Mostly fixed in code, but a WAF can block known IDOR and forced-browsing patterns.

Injection (SQLi, command, LDAP)

Untrusted input interpreted as code. Parameterized queries are the real fix; a WAF with ML-augmented signatures catches injection payloads (including obfuscated variants) at the edge as defense in depth.

Cross-site scripting (XSS)

Malicious scripts reflected or stored and run in victims' browsers. Output encoding and CSP are primary defenses; a WAF blocks common script-injection signatures.

SSRF

Server-Side Request Forgery tricks your server into making requests to internal resources. WAF rules can block requests carrying internal IPs and metadata-endpoint URLs.

Security misconfiguration

• Default credentials left in place.
• Verbose error messages leaking stack traces.
• Missing security headers (HSTS, CSP, X-Frame-Options).
• Exposed admin panels and debug endpoints.

Karbon's WAF ships managed rules covering the OWASP Top 10, plus continuous vulnerability scanning to catch misconfigurations before attackers do.