The CVE MITRE foundation has released the list of “On the Cusp” in which many of the CWEs (Common Weakness Enumerations) have increased as well as decreased in their rankings between 2022 and 2023.

CVE releases the top 25 most dangerous software weaknesses which helps organizations to mitigate software security risks.

However, exploitable vulnerabilities beyond these top 25 must also be taken into consideration as they also possess a great threat to an organization.

2023 “On the Cusp”

As per the analysis from MITRE foundation, between the top 26-40 list of vulnerabilities, three vulnerabilities have increased in their rank when compared to their ranking in 2022, which includes Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key, which moves to rank #38 from rank #56 in 2022.

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling increased its rank from rank #42 in 2022 to rank #29 in 2023. Reachable Assertion also increased in rank from rank #44 in 2022 to rank #26 in 2023. 

The reachable assertion was the only vulnerability to increase 18 ranks which is the highest increase as of 2023. Followed by Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key which increased 16 ranks subsequently, followed by Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling which increased 13 ranks.

1. Reachable Assertion CWE-617
2. Uncontrolled Search Path Element CWE-427
3. Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference CWE-611
4. Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling CWE-770
5. Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor CWE-200
6. Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource CWE-732
7. URL Redirection to Untrusted Site (‘Open Redirect’) CWE-601
8. Improperly Controlled Modification of Object Prototype Attributes (‘Prototype Pollution’) CWE-1321
9. Improper Certificate Validation CWE-295
10. Insufficiently Protected Credentials CWE-522
11. Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime CWE-401
12. Uncontrolled Resource Consumption CWE-400
13. Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key CWE-639
14. Improper Link Resolution Before File Access (‘Link Following’) CWE-59
15. Exposure of Resource to Wrong Sphere CWE-668

Vulnerabilities Dropped from Top 25 List of 2022

Two vulnerabilities that were present on the top 25 list of 2022 dropped down to 26-40 in 2023 which includes Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference, which went down from rank #24 to #28.

Another vulnerability that was dropped from the top 25 list was Uncontrolled Resource Consumption dropped from rank #23 in 2022 to rank #37 in 2023. This vulnerability was the biggest drop from the list between ranks 1-40 which decreased 14 ranks.

However, three vulnerabilities were dropped from the top 1-40 rank list, which includes, Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information (from #40 to #43), Access of Resource Using Incompatible Type (Type Confusion) (from #31 to #46) and  Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information (from #39 to #48).

CVE MITRE foundation has released a complete list of its “On the cusp” vulnerabilities which shows the current list of top vulnerabilities of 2023.