CWE CWE Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses (original) (raw)
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Welcome to the 2024 Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE™) Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses list (CWE™ Top 25). This list demonstrates the currently most common and impactful software weaknesses. Often easy to find and exploit, these can lead to exploitable vulnerabilities that allow adversaries to completely take over a system, steal data, or prevent applications from working. | |
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| 2024 Top 25 List | Key Insights | Methodology |
The CWE Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses List highlights the most severe and prevalent weaknesses behind the 31,770 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE®) Records in this year’s dataset. Uncovering the root causes of these vulnerabilities serves as a powerful guide for investments, policies, and practices to prevent these vulnerabilities from occurring in the first place — benefiting both industry and government stakeholders.
The CWE Top 25 can help inform:
- Vulnerability Reduction – Insights into the common root causes drive valuable feedback into vendors’ SDLC and architectural planning, helping to eliminate entire classes of defect (e.g., memory safety, injection)
- Cost Savings – Fewer vulnerabilities in product development mean fewer issues to manage post-deployment, ultimately saving money and resources
- Trend Analysis – Insight into data trends enables organizations to better focus security efforts
- Exploitability Insights – Certain weaknesses such as command injection attract adversarial attention, enabling risk prioritization.
- Customer Trust – Transparency in how organizations address these weaknesses shows commitment to product security
The 2024 CWE Top 25 is not only a valuable resource for developers and security professionals, but it also serves as a strategic guide for organizations aiming to make informed decisions in software, security, and risk management investments.
Also available now:
- 2024 CWE Top 10 KEV Weaknesses — Ranking actively exploited weaknesses by CISA’s KEV Catalog.
- 2024 “On the Cusp” Weaknesses List – 15 additional weaknesses that were “on the cusp” of being included in the 2024 CWE Top 25.
- 2024 On the Cusp Weaknesses Insights — A discussion about the On the Cusp CWEs that continue to be prevalent and severe enough to cause concern.