OWASP Top 10 for Business Logic Abuse

Modern applications rely heavily on complex business logic to manage workflows, data, and user interactions. Unlike traditional vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or misconfigurations, business logic abuse exploits design flaws in how applications operate. These attacks manipulate application workflows, state transitions, and decision-making processes to gain unauthorized access, bypass restrictions, or disrupt operations.

The OWASP Business Logic Abuse Top 10 complements and enhances existing OWASP Top 10 projects by providing a cross-domain focus on business logic vulnerabilities that transcend technology stacks. Whether applied to web applications, APIs, mobile apps, firmware, supply chain systems, or even hardware platforms, these issues remain universal as they target the fundamental logic governing workflows and state transitions. By addressing flaws like workflow step skipping, broken object-level authorization, and business constraint bypasses, this Top 10 bridges gaps in domain-specific lists, ensuring that logic abuse risks are identified and mitigated regardless of the implementation medium. This unifying approach fosters better integration of security practices across diverse OWASP projects, strengthening overall application security frameworks.

The OWASP Business Logic Abuse Top 10 provides a structured methodology for identifying and prioritizing the most critical business logic vulnerabilities. This project introduces an innovative, open approach based on Turing machine principles, modeling applications as finite states, transitions, and memory operations. This approach allows the broader security community to understand, simulate, and mitigate business logic vulnerabilities systematically.

Purpose of the Project Raise Awareness: Highlight the prevalence and impact of business logic flaws in modern applications. Create a Reproducible Methodology: Provide an open framework based on computational principles for identifying, modeling, and analyzing these vulnerabilities. Empower Developers and Architects: Equip technical stakeholders with tools and insights to design secure workflows and logic. Define Top 10 Issues: Establish a comprehensive, prioritized list of the most critical business logic abuses, supported by real-world case studies and a computational model. Unique Approach This project departs from traditional vulnerability frameworks by leveraging the Turing machine model to define and categorize business logic abuse. Applications are viewed as abstract machines with:

Tape: Representing memory or data storage (e.g., databases, in-memory objects). Head: Representing data access mechanisms (e.g., API calls, queries). States: Representing application workflows (e.g., authentication, transaction approval). Transitions: Representing the logic that moves the application between states (e.g., user actions, API responses). Key Innovations Computational Foundation: Modeling vulnerabilities through Turing machine components provides a systematic approach to understanding flaws. Open Methodology: Every step of the vulnerability identification process is documented, allowing the community to validate and expand the research. Focus on Root Causes: Identifies and classifies vulnerabilities by their underlying computational flaws (e.g., state mismanagement, transition errors, memory corruption). Practical Outcomes: Provides actionable guidance for preventing, detecting, and mitigating business logic abuse. Methodology

1. Vulnerability Modeling with Turing Machines Applications are modeled as Turing machines to abstract their behavior:

Tape: Stores the application’s data (e.g., user inputs, transaction logs). Head: Accesses and modifies data on the tape. States: Represent stages in application workflows. Transitions: Define how the application moves between states based on conditions. Business logic vulnerabilities are identified by simulating flaws in these components:

Tape Issues: Data inconsistencies, corruption, or unauthorized modifications. State Issues: Improper initialization, transitions, or management of states. Transition Issues: Workflow bypasses, race conditions, or weak validations.

1. Open and Reproducible Process The project adopts a transparent research methodology:

Data Sources: Analysis of real-world incidents, penetration testing reports, and industry publications. Root Cause Analysis: Vulnerabilities are traced back to fundamental issues in Turing machine components. Community Collaboration: Contributions and feedback from the OWASP community are integral to the project.

1. Vulnerability Prioritization The Top 10 vulnerabilities are selected based on:

Frequency: How often they are encountered in real-world applications. Impact: The potential damage to confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Exploitability: The ease with which attackers can exploit the flaw.

Road Map

July-November 2024: analytical work for modeling business logic in terms of Turing machines December 2024 : mapping CVE data with issues classes by the model, open submissions January 2025: first draft release February-March 2025: public feedback gathering to decide of GA