The Official OWASP Top 10 2025 List: What Changed, What Didn’t, and Why It Matters
OWASP has officially released the Top 10 Web Application Security Risks for 2025, and while some changes were expected, others came as genuine surprises. As with every new release, the list reflects not just raw vulnerability data, but broader trends in how modern applications are built, deployed, and attacked.
Ahead of the release, I made several predictions based primarily on CVE data and industry trends. Some of those predictions were spot-on, while others missed the mark due to OWASP’s evolving methodology and its strong emphasis on community input.
This post breaks down what I got right, what I got wrong, and what the 2025 list tells us about the current and future state of application security.
OWASP Top 10: 2021 vs 2025 Comparison
The table below shows how categories moved between 2021 and 2025, including renames, consolidations, and newly introduced categories.
| Rank | OWASP Top 10 – 2021 | OWASP Top 10 – 2025 | Movement |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Broken Access Control | Broken Access Control (incl. SSRF) | ⬆️ Stayed #1 |
| 2 | Cryptographic Failures | Security Misconfiguration | ⬆️ Up |
| 3 | Injection | Software Supply Chain Failures | ⬆️ Up (Renamed) |
| 4 | Insecure Design | Insecure Design | ⬇️ Down |
| 5 | Security Misconfiguration | Injection | ⬇️ Down |
| 6 | Vulnerable & Outdated Components | Cryptographic Failures | ⬇️ Down |
| 7 | Identification & Authentication Failures | Identification & Authentication Failures | ➡️ No change |
| 8 | Software & Data Integrity Failures | Software & Data Integrity Failures | ➡️ No change |
| 9 | Logging & Monitoring Failures | Logging & Alerting Failures | ➡️ No change |
| 10 | SSRF | Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions | 🆕 New |
Note: OWASP continues its trend of broadening categories and consolidating related weaknesses, reducing overlap while emphasizing systemic issues.
What I Got Right
The following predictions were correct:
- Broken Access Control remained firmly at the #1 spot
- Software and Data Integrity Failures stayed at #8
- Most prior categories were retained, with OWASP continuing to broaden and merge classifications
- SSRF was absorbed into a broader category rather than standing alone
Broken Access Control holding the top position was unsurprising. It remains the most consistently exploited class of vulnerability across real-world web applications. Authorization bypasses, missing object-level access controls, and privilege escalation flaws continue to appear in nearly every large-scale assessment.
What I didn’t fully anticipate was SSRF being merged into Broken Access Control. On reflection, this decision makes sense. At its core, SSRF is an access control failure: users are able to coerce servers into making requests to internal or restricted systems they should never be able to reach. Grouping SSRF under Broken Access Control reinforces the idea that authorization boundaries extend beyond user-facing features and into backend trust relationships.
The reuse of familiar categories also aligns with OWASP’s historical approach. While names evolve slightly, the underlying classes of weaknesses remain consistent, reflecting the persistent nature of application security challenges.
What I Got Wrong
Several key predictions did not materialize:
- Security Misconfiguration surged to #2 instead of dropping
- Vulnerable and Outdated Components was renamed to Software Supply Chain Failures and moved up
- Injection dropped to #5 rather than rising
- Identification and Authentication Failures remained unchanged
- A new category, “Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions,” was introduced
The primary reason these predictions missed the mark lies in OWASP’s scoring methodology. OWASP counts each vulnerability category only once per application, regardless of how many individual instances exist.
For example, an application with a systemic XSS flaw that generates ten CVEs is still treated as a single occurrence of Injection. This approach emphasizes how widespread a weakness is across applications, not how frequently it appears within any one system.
My predictions relied heavily on raw CVE volume, which does not fully capture OWASP’s broader, community-driven perspective.
Reflecting on the New List
The rise of Security Misconfiguration to the #2 position is entirely justified. As organizations accelerate their adoption of cloud-native architectures, configuration complexity has exploded. Infrastructure-as-code, sprawling microservices, multi-cloud environments, and deeply nested permission models all increase the likelihood of dangerous missteps.
In an ecosystem where everything is configurable, misconfigurations become inevitable.
The transition from Vulnerable and Outdated Components to Software Supply Chain Failures also reflects reality. While traditional penetration tests may not always uncover deep supply-chain compromises, industry-wide incidents have made it clear that dependency trust is a major risk. Recent NPM and open-source ecosystem attacks demonstrate how a single poisoned package can ripple across thousands of organizations.
The downward movement of Injection and Cryptographic Failures is reasonable when viewed through OWASP’s lens. Despite their massive CVE volume, these issues are increasingly mitigated by modern frameworks, safer defaults, and managed cryptographic libraries.
Encouragingly, Insecure Design dropping suggests progress. More teams are incorporating threat modeling, secure design patterns, and early security reviews into the development lifecycle. While far from solved, this shift points to growing maturity in how organizations approach security before code is written.
Meanwhile, Identification and Authentication Failures holding steady highlights a persistent truth: authentication is never “done.” Even with modern identity providers and managed solutions, misconfigurations and logic flaws continue to undermine security.
Finally, Logging & Alerting Failures remaining at #9 reinforces a long-standing operational gap. Many organizations generate logs, but lack the alerting, correlation, and response capabilities required to detect and contain real attacks.
Reflecting on the Brand New Category
OWASP defines “Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions” as:
“Failing to prevent, detect, and respond to unusual and unpredictable situations, leading to crashes, unexpected behavior, and sometimes vulnerabilities.”
While I didn’t predict its inclusion, it absolutely belongs on the list.
In the past several years, nearly every application I’ve tested has exhibited some form of error-handling weakness: verbose stack traces, sensitive data leakage, unchecked failure states, or unexpected behavior under edge conditions.
One particularly memorable example came from a recent penetration test where a verbose error message leaked a full local web directory path. This disclosure revealed the underlying web technology, server structure, and hosting location within the operating system.
Combined with a file upload path traversal vulnerability, that single error message provided enough context to craft and deploy a malicious Java WAR file—ultimately leading to remote code execution.
This is a textbook example of how seemingly minor issues become critical when chained together, perfectly illustrating why mishandling exceptional conditions deserves its own category.
Conclusion
The OWASP Top 10:2025 introduced a few surprises, but the rationale behind the changes is clear. Rising categories like Security Misconfiguration and Software Supply Chain Failures reflect the realities of modern software: complex cloud deployments, sprawling dependencies, and interconnected ecosystems that expand the attack surface far beyond traditional coding errors.
At the same time, the stabilization or decline of categories like Injection and Insecure Design suggests real progress in secure coding practices and architectural thinking.
What stands out most is OWASP’s continued shift toward systemic and operational weaknesses, supported by an analysis of 589 CWEs. The categories are broader, more holistic, and increasingly focused on how applications fail in real-world environments.
The OWASP Top 10 remains not just a vulnerability list, but a strategic guidepost—highlighting where the industry has improved and where attention must turn next in the ever-evolving fight for secure software.
