May 18, 2023

Earlier this year, we released a report on the top 10 open source vulnerabilities from data based on user scans — giving you an inside look into the most common (and critical) vulnerabilities Snyk users found in their third-party code and dependencies. 

Building on this trend, we decided to look into the most common vulnerabilities in first-party code. While OWASP served as a guiding light for open source security intel, gathering data on proprietary code was a bit more complex. Thankfully, the Snyk Security Research team — the same folks responsible for our cutting-edge machine learning and hybrid AI — were able to provide unbiased data on the top code vulnerabilities they encountered in 2021. 

The Snyk Top 10 Code Vulnerabilities Report is an aggregate of the ten most common vulnerability types across seven popular languages — JavaScript, Java, Python, Go, PHP, Ruby, and C#. While you’re likely to see all ten vulnerability types in the report at one point or another, their frequency and prevalence in your projects will vary based on language, application, coding guidelines, etc. 

If you’d like to learn more about the languages you use most often, we also created a top 10 cheat sheet for each of the seven above-mentioned languages. These cheat sheets rank the ten most common vulnerability types in a given language by occurrence — with each vulnerability type linking to a relevant CWE page or Snyk Learn lesson for more information. 

Stay safe, stay educated, stay out of the headlines!

A development team’s proprietary code is the heart of any application, making application and code security critical. Snyk Code is a developer-focused, real-time SAST tool that allows you to secure your code as it’s written — reducing overall vulnerability counts and security backlogs. Create a free account today to see the difference a tool built by, and for, developers can make. 

Download the Snyk Top 10 Code Vulnerabilities Report today for all the details on the most common code vulnerabilities and how to mitigate them. And head over to the Snyk Top 10 webpage for links to the language-specific cheat sheets. 

Finally, if webinars are more your speed, Frank Fischer, Technical Product Marketing Manager for Snyk Code, gave a fantastic presentation on the top ten code vulnerabilities to avoid in 2023. You can check out the on-demand recording below.