Top Software Vulnerabilities of 2022
Top Software Vulnerabilities of 2022
Did you know that malware attacks on software have increased by 11% to
reach 2.8 billion in 2022?
This is a staggering rise in security attacks and a huge point of concern for the
industry. For many companies, the security of their software systems becomes
a priority only after they experience a breach.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you want to keep your systems secure
and provide users with a safe environment, you need to be conscious of
security flaws. You need to identify common software vulnerabilities that can
hurt your reputation.
Moreover, you also need to find ways to prevent cyber security attacks that
can wreak havoc on your systems and steal sensitive user information.
For the same, we are going to explain the top and most common software
vulnerabilities and how you can prevent them. But before we get into them,
let’s understand what software vulnerability means and what are their
implications:
Software vulnerabilities are the security flaws or issues in your software files
or codes using which hackers can compromise and steal data. Sometimes,
these vulnerabilities are hiding in plain sight but go unnoticed due to
inexperience and incompetency.
Even with proper testing and manual code reviews, one cannot always
discover every single vulnerability present in the code. And if they are left
unchecked, these security flaws can easily impact your software’s
performance and safety.
Microsoft products are the perfect examples of the same as they have a global
ecosystem of software products and vulnerabilities inevitable for them. So, if
someone exploits any Microsoft software, their potential list of targets will
rise significantly.
Looking at the vendor side, vulnerabilities get introduced when adding new
features to an existing application. This could lead to integration errors as
well as general glitches and bugs. Moreover, untested upgrades can cause
configuration errors too, and create permission and accessibility flaws.
Any of the errors mentioned can lead to high-security risks like information
disclosure, service denial, tampering with code, spoofing, remote code
execution, and many others. Since there are no such guidelines or
standardized reporting methods for patching, vulnerabilities don’t get
addressed as much as they should.
Another factor that slightly inclines in the favor of hackers is not signing your
software products with code signing certificates. Such digital security
certificates use a cryptographic hash function to protect code from
modification by unauthorized users.
It timestamps the code so that when someone tampers with it, the OS will
alert users for unknown publication.
Impact on Operations:
Attackers can effortlessly gain access to sensitive data and manipulate it for
their own benefit. With multiple attacks on your systems, it becomes easy for
attackers to gain easy access causing several disruptions in your operations.
Impact on Financials:
Now that we have learned about software vulnerabilities and their impact, it’s
time to learn what are the common flaws and how you can prevent them. So,
without further ado, let’s begin:
2. Injection Flaws
Injection or SQL injection is a type of database attack carried out against web
servers that are built using a structured query language (SQL). Such attacks
help malicious agents gain privileged information or perform tasks that would
require authentication.
Attackers masquerading as trusted users can inject malware codes that are
difficult for the program to differentiate from its own code, allowing them
access to protected areas.
The insecure design focuses on the design and architectural flaws in software.
It has a greater use for threat modeling, recommendations for safe design, and
reference architecture.
6. Insecure Deserialization
It can expose data like session tokens, login IDs & passwords, transaction
details, and personal information. For example, even if the software encrypts
the credit card details of users, attackers can immediately decrypt it when
they access user personal information with SQL injection.