By rssfeeds-admin The CWE Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses continues to serve as an authoritative guide for developers, security professionals, and organizational stakeholders seeking to strengthen their defenses against exploitable vulnerabilities.
Cross-Site Scripting Dominates the Threat Landscape
For the second consecutive year, Cross-Site Scripting (CWE-79) remains the most prevalent and dangerous weakness, with a score of 60.38 significantly higher than all other weaknesses.
This injection-based vulnerability remains a persistent threat across web applications, with seven entries in the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.
SQL Injection (CWE-89) climbed one position to rank second with a score of 28.72, reflecting its continued exploitation by threat actors across diverse platforms and applications.
A notable trend in the 2025 rankings is the significant rise of authorization-related vulnerabilities. Missing Authorization (CWE-862) surged five positions to fourth place, indicating a concerning shift in how organizations manage access controls.
Combined with other authorization flaws such as Incorrect Authorization (CWE-863) and Missing Authentication for Critical Functions (CWE-306), these weaknesses pose a systemic challenge for identity and access management implementations.
Memory safety vulnerabilities continue to pose substantial risks, with Out-of-bounds Write (CWE-787) ranked fifth and Use After Free (CWE-416) seventh.
These weaknesses remain particularly exploitable in compiled languages and embedded systems, with 12 and 14 KEV entries, respectively.
The inclusion of buffer overflow variants Classic Buffer Overflow (CWE-120), Stack-based Buffer Overflow (CWE-121), and Heap-based Buffer Overflow (CWE-122) underscores the persistent danger of unsafe memory operations.
The 2025 CWE Top 25 serves multiple critical functions for the cybersecurity community. The list enables organizations to prioritize vulnerability reduction efforts by addressing root causes rather than individual instances.
Developers can leverage these insights to improve secure development lifecycle (SDLC) practices and architectural planning, potentially eliminating entire classes of defects.
Security teams gain actionable intelligence for risk prioritization based on exploitability patterns, while organizations can demonstrate commitment to product security and customer trust.
This comprehensive ranking reflects current threat trends and provides a strategic roadmap for both technical investments and organizational policies to prevent vulnerabilities before they enter production environments.
| Rank | CWE ID | Weakness Name | Score | KEV Entries |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CWE-79 | Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) | 60.38 | 7 |
| 2 | CWE-89 | SQL Injection | 28.72 | 4 |
| 3 | CWE-352 | Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) | 13.64 | 0 |
| 4 | CWE-862 | Missing Authorization | 13.28 | 0 |
| 5 | CWE-787 | Out-of-bounds Write | 12.68 | 12 |
| 6 | CWE-22 | Path Traversal | 8.99 | 10 |
| 7 | CWE-416 | Use After Free | 8.47 | 14 |
| 8 | CWE-125 | Out-of-bounds Read | 7.88 | 3 |
| 9 | CWE-78 | OS Command Injection | 7.85 | 20 |
| 10 | CWE-94 | Code Injection | 7.57 | 7 |
| 11 | CWE-120 | Classic Buffer Overflow | 6.96 | 0 |
| 12 | CWE-434 | Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type | 6.87 | 4 |
| 13 | CWE-476 | NULL Pointer Dereference | 6.41 | 0 |
| 14 | CWE-121 | Stack-based Buffer Overflow | 5.75 | 4 |
| 15 | CWE-502 | Deserialization of Untrusted Data | 5.23 | 11 |
| 16 | CWE-122 | Heap-based Buffer Overflow | 5.21 | 6 |
| 17 | CWE-863 | Incorrect Authorization | 4.14 | 4 |
| 18 | CWE-20 | Improper Input Validation | 4.09 | 2 |
| 19 | CWE-284 | Improper Access Control | 4.07 | 1 |
| 20 | CWE-200 | Exposure of Sensitive Information | 4.01 | 1 |
| 21 | CWE-306 | Missing Authentication for Critical Function | 3.47 | 11 |
| 22 | CWE-918 | Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) | 3.36 | 0 |
| 23 | CWE-77 | Command Injection | 3.15 | 2 |
| 24 | CWE-639 | Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key | 2.62 | 0 |
| 25 | CWE-770 | Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling | 2.54 | 0 |
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The post MITRE Unveils 2025’s Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses appeared first on Cyber Security News.
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