The OWASP Top 10 is the single most important reference for web application security interviews. Whether you are targeting penetration testing or application security, you should be able to explain each category, give an example, and describe remediation.
What is the OWASP Top 10?
The OWASP Top 10 is a regularly-updated, community-driven list of the most critical web application security risks. It is a starting point for awareness and testing, not an exhaustive checklist.
The categories that come up most
- Broken Access Control: users acting outside their intended permissions (e.g. IDOR). Remediate with server-side authorisation checks and deny-by-default.
- Injection (incl. SQL injection): untrusted input changing a query or command. Remediate with parameterised queries, input validation and least privilege.
- Cryptographic Failures: weak or missing encryption of sensitive data in transit and at rest.
- Security Misconfiguration: default credentials, verbose errors, unnecessary features.
- Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF): tricking the server into making requests, especially dangerous in cloud environments (metadata endpoints).
- Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): injecting scripts into pages; remediate with output encoding and a strong Content Security Policy.
How to answer well
For each category, follow a simple pattern: what it is → a concrete example → the impact → how you would remediate it. Interviewers want to see you can both find and fix issues, and that you think about business impact, not just the exploit.
Likely questions
- Walk me through the OWASP Top 10.
- How does SQL injection work and how do you prevent it?
- What is the difference between stored, reflected and DOM-based XSS?
- Why has SSRF become more impactful with cloud adoption?
- How would you test for broken access control?
How to prepare
Practise on deliberately vulnerable apps (e.g. OWASP Juice Shop), and be ready to explain both exploitation and remediation clearly. This connects directly to penetration tester interview questions and network security interview questions.
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Explain risks with impact and mitigation
For each OWASP category, structure your answer as what it is → why it's dangerous → how you'd prevent it. For example, for injection: "Untrusted input is executed as code; it can expose or destroy data; prevent it with parameterised queries and input validation." Interviewers value the mitigation as much as the definition.
Prioritise the classics
Be fluent on broken access control, injection, cryptographic failures, and security misconfiguration — the categories that appear most in real breaches. Relate them to detection where you can (see SIEM), and be ready to discuss secure development practices as part of your cyber security interview.