OWASP Top 10 overview in Cybersecurity - Mini Project: Build & Apply

OWASP Top 10 Overview

📖 Scenario: You are part of a small company's IT team. Your manager asked you to prepare a simple summary of the OWASP Top 10 security risks to share with your coworkers. This will help everyone understand the most common web application security problems.

🎯 Goal: Create a clear list of the OWASP Top 10 security risks with a brief description for each. This list will be used as a quick reference guide for your team.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called owasp_top_10 with the exact 10 OWASP risk names as keys and their short descriptions as values.

Create a variable called risk_threshold and set it to the number 5 to represent the top half of the list.

Use a for loop with variables risk and description to iterate over owasp_top_10.items() and create a new dictionary called top_risks containing only the first 5 risks.

Add a final key-value pair to owasp_top_10 with the key 'Summary' and a short sentence summarizing the importance of these risks.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Understanding the OWASP Top 10 helps developers and IT teams protect web applications from common security threats.

💼 Career

Knowledge of OWASP Top 10 is essential for roles in cybersecurity, software development, and IT security auditing.

1

Create the OWASP Top 10 dictionary

Create a dictionary called owasp_top_10 with these exact entries: 'Injection' with description 'Flaws allowing untrusted data to be executed as code.', 'Broken Authentication' with 'Failures in authentication mechanisms.', 'Sensitive Data Exposure' with 'Inadequate protection of sensitive information.', 'XML External Entities (XXE)' with 'Vulnerabilities in XML processors.', 'Broken Access Control' with 'Restrictions on authenticated users are not properly enforced.', 'Security Misconfiguration' with 'Improper configuration of security settings.', 'Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)' with 'Injection of malicious scripts into web pages.', 'Insecure Deserialization' with 'Deserialization flaws leading to remote code execution.', 'Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities' with 'Use of vulnerable software components.', and 'Insufficient Logging & Monitoring' with 'Lack of proper logging and monitoring.'.

Cybersecurity

# Create the owasp_top_10 dictionary with the exact 10 risks and descriptions
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create the dictionary. Each key is a string with the risk name, and each value is a string with the description.

2

Set the risk threshold

Create a variable called risk_threshold and set it to the number 5 to represent the top half of the OWASP Top 10 list.

Cybersecurity

owasp_top_10 = {
    'Injection': 'Flaws allowing untrusted data to be executed as code.',
    'Broken Authentication': 'Failures in authentication mechanisms.',
    'Sensitive Data Exposure': 'Inadequate protection of sensitive information.',
    'XML External Entities (XXE)': 'Vulnerabilities in XML processors.',
    'Broken Access Control': 'Restrictions on authenticated users are not properly enforced.',
    'Security Misconfiguration': 'Improper configuration of security settings.',
    'Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)': 'Injection of malicious scripts into web pages.',
    'Insecure Deserialization': 'Deserialization flaws leading to remote code execution.',
    'Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities': 'Use of vulnerable software components.',
    'Insufficient Logging & Monitoring': 'Lack of proper logging and monitoring.'
}
# Create risk_threshold variable and set it to 5
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just create a variable named risk_threshold and assign it the number 5.

3

Select the top risks using a loop

Use a for loop with variables risk and description to iterate over owasp_top_10.items(). Create a new empty dictionary called top_risks before the loop. Inside the loop, add each risk and description to top_risks until you have added risk_threshold number of risks. Use a counter variable called count initialized to 0 to track how many risks have been added.

Cybersecurity

owasp_top_10 = {
    'Injection': 'Flaws allowing untrusted data to be executed as code.',
    'Broken Authentication': 'Failures in authentication mechanisms.',
    'Sensitive Data Exposure': 'Inadequate protection of sensitive information.',
    'XML External Entities (XXE)': 'Vulnerabilities in XML processors.',
    'Broken Access Control': 'Restrictions on authenticated users are not properly enforced.',
    'Security Misconfiguration': 'Improper configuration of security settings.',
    'Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)': 'Injection of malicious scripts into web pages.',
    'Insecure Deserialization': 'Deserialization flaws leading to remote code execution.',
    'Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities': 'Use of vulnerable software components.',
    'Insufficient Logging & Monitoring': 'Lack of proper logging and monitoring.'
}
risk_threshold = 5

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Start with an empty dictionary top_risks = {} and a counter count = 0. Use a for loop over owasp_top_10.items(). Inside the loop, check if count is less than risk_threshold. If yes, add the risk to top_risks and increase count by 1. Stop the loop when count reaches risk_threshold.

4

Add a summary to the OWASP dictionary

Add a new key-value pair to the owasp_top_10 dictionary with the key 'Summary' and the value 'These top 10 risks highlight the most critical security issues in web applications.'.

Cybersecurity

owasp_top_10['Summary'] = 'These top 10 risks highlight the most critical security issues in web applications.'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the syntax owasp_top_10['Summary'] = 'Your summary text' to add the new entry.