The OWASP Top 10 lists the most critical web application security vulnerabilities. Most developer code probably has at least three of them: injection (SQL, NoSQL), authentication flaws, and data exposure. They’re not exotic. They’re in your codebase right now. Fixing them requires validating input, using parameterized queries, securing sessions, encrypting sensitive data, and keeping dependencies updated. You don’t need a security degree. You need to think like an attacker for five minutes.
I once found a login bypass in a production app that had been there for six months. The attacker just put `admin’ –` in the username field and SQL injection did the rest. The entire auth system was compromised. The developer who built it didn’t think “this is secure” — they just didn’t think about security at all.
The OWASP Top 10 isn’t abstract. It’s the list of vulnerabilities that actually appear in real applications. Most of the time, they’re not sophisticated attacks. They’re basic oversights. And you probably have them too.