Summary
The Common Weakness Enumeration (CEV) organization has released their 2022 Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses list. This list demonstrates the most common and impactful software weaknesses occurring during the year of 2022. To create the list, the CWE Team leveraged Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) data found within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) National Vulnerability Database (NVD) and the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) scores associated with each CVE record, including a focus on CVE Records from the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog.
Software architects, designers, developers, testers, users, project managers, security researchers, educators, and contributors to standards developing organizations (SDOs) are encouraged to utilize this list to mitigate risk within their organization, according to CWE.
CEV Top 25 List
| Rank | ID | Name | Score | KEV Count | Rank Change vs. 2021 |
| 1 | CWE-787 | Out-of-bounds Write | 64.2 | 62 | 0 |
| 2 | CWE-79 | Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation (‘Cross-site Scripting’) | 45.97 | 2 | 0 |
| 3 | CWE-89 | Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command (‘SQL Injection’) | 22.11 | 7 | +3 |
| 4 | CWE-20 | Improper Input Validation | 20.63 | 20 | 0 |
| 5 | CWE-125 | Out-of-bounds Read | 17.67 | 1 | -2 |
| 6 | CWE-78 | Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command (‘OS Command Injection’) | 17.53 | 32 | -1 |
| 7 | CWE-416 | Use After Free | 15.5 | 28 | 0 |
| 8 | CWE-22 | Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory (‘Path Traversal’) | 14.08 | 19 | 0 |
| 9 | CWE-352 | Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) | 11.53 | 1 | 0 |
| 10 | CWE-434 | Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type | 9.56 | 6 | 0 |
| 11 | CWE-476 | NULL Pointer Dereference | 7.15 | 0 | +4 |
| 12 | CWE-502 | Deserialization of Untrusted Data | 6.68 | 7 | +1 |
| 13 | CWE-190 | Integer Overflow or Wraparound | 6.53 | 2 | -1 |
| 14 | CWE-287 | Improper Authentication | 6.35 | 4 | 0 |
| 15 | CWE-798 | Use of Hard-coded Credentials | 5.66 | 0 | +1 |
| 16 | CWE-862 | Missing Authorization | 5.53 | 1 | +2 |
| 17 | CWE-77 | Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in a Command (‘Command Injection’) | 5.42 | 5 | +8 |
| 18 | CWE-306 | Missing Authentication for Critical Function | 5.15 | 6 | -7 |
| 19 | CWE-119 | Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer | 4.85 | 6 | -2 |
| 20 | CWE-276 | Incorrect Default Permissions | 4.84 | 0 | -1 |
| 21 | CWE-918 | Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) | 4.27 | 8 | +3 |
| 22 | CWE-362 | Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization (‘Race Condition’) | 3.57 | 6 | +11 |
| 23 | CWE-400 | Uncontrolled Resource Consumption | 3.56 | 2 | +4 |
| 24 | CWE-611 | Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference | 3.38 | 0 | -1 |
| 25 | CWE-94 | Improper Control of Generation of Code (‘Code Injection’) | 3.32 | 4 | +3 |
Key Findings
According to the CWE, there are several notable shifts in ranked positions of weakness types from 2021’s list when compared to 2022, including several weaknesses dropping away or making their first appearance in the Top 25 CWEs.
The biggest movers up the list are:
- CWE-362 (Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization (‘Race Condition’)): from #33 to #22
- CWE-94 (Improper Control of Generation of Code (‘Code Injection’)): from #28 to #25
- CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption): from #27 to #23
- CWE-77 (Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in a Command (‘Command Injection’)): from #25 to #17
- CWE-476 (NULL Pointer Dereference): from #15 to #11
The biggest downward movers are:
- CWE-306 (Missing Authentication for Critical Function): from #11 to #18
- CWE-200 (Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor): from #20 to #33
- CWE-522 (Insufficiently Protected Credentials): from #21 to #38
- CWE-732 (Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource): from #22 to #30
New entries in the Top 25 are:
- CWE-362 (Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization (‘Race Condition’)): from #33 to #22
- CWE-94 (Improper Control of Generation of Code (‘Code Injection’)): from #28 to #25
- CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption): from #27 to #23
