Software and data integrity failures refer to vulnerabilities that arise when untrusted or unverified components are introduced into software systems. These failures occur when attackers manipulate software or data to exploit weak points, potentially leading to unauthorised control, data breaches, or malicious activities within applications.
In the fast-paced world of software development, ensuring secure user authentication and session management is of paramount importance. As businesses become more dependent on digital platforms, the potential for cyber threats targeting authentication mechanisms increases significantly. These attacks can have far-reaching consequences, including data breaches, financial losses, and reputational damage. For software developers and architects, understanding the nuances of authentication and session management failures is essential to safeguarding user data and maintaining trust.
In the modern digital landscape, authentication is the gateway to securing sensitive information. For users to access personal or organisational data, their identities must be verified, ensuring that only authorised individuals can perform actions within an application. Session management plays an equally crucial role, ensuring that once a user has authenticated themselves, their session remains secure from external threats.
Modern software development depends on a complex ecosystem of third-party components. Frameworks, libraries, and plugins streamline coding tasks, enabling developers to focus on building application-specific features. However, when these components become outdated or contain vulnerabilities, they pose a serious risk to application security, potentially leading to data breaches, service interruptions, or legal liabilities.
Vulnerable and Outdated Components is one of the categories in the OWASP Top 10, a widely recognised standard for the most critical security risks to web applications. Specifically, it relates to the category “A06:2021 – Vulnerable and Outdated Components,” which highlights the risks posed by outdated libraries, frameworks, and software components.
WordPress, which began as a simple blogging platform in 2003, has evolved into one of the most widely used content management systems (CMS) globally. Currently powering over 40% of websites, WordPress has become synonymous with digital publishing—ranging from small personal blogs to large-scale enterprise solutions. For many C-level executives, WordPress represents an agile, cost-effective solution to rapidly establish and manage an online presence.
However, with extensive adoption comes amplified risk. The same features that make WordPress easy to use—such as its vibrant plugin ecosystem and open-source nature—can also create ripe opportunities for attackers to exploit vulnerabilities. WordPress database injection, often referred to more broadly as SQL injection (SQLi), stands out as a critical concern. Attackers who successfully execute a database injection can gain unauthorised access to sensitive data, manipulate website content, or even pivot to other parts of the organisation’s network.
WordPress relies on a MySQL (or MariaDB) database to store content, user data, plugin settings, and other critical information. An SQL injection attack leverages insecure code or configurations to inject malicious SQL queries into the database, allowing attackers to read, modify, or even delete data, and in some extreme cases, compromise the server itself.
Insecure design refers to flaws or omissions at the design stage of application development that lead to vulnerabilities in the system. Unlike implementation bugs, which result from coding errors, insecure design represents a fundamental failure to consider and incorporate security principles during planning and architecture.