Synopsys Research Finds Vulnerabilities in 97% of Applications

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Synopsys' 2021 Software Vulnerability Snapshot report examines prevalence of vulnerabilities identified by Synopsys Application Security Testing Services.

www.eetasia.com, Nov. 18, 2021 – 

Synopsys Inc. has released a report examining data from 3,900 tests conducted on 2,600 targets (i.e., software or systems) during 2020. According to the 2021 Software Vulnerability Snapshot: An Analysis by Synopsys Application Security Testing Services, 97% of the targets were found to have some form of vulnerability.

The data, compiled by tests performed by Synopsys security consultants in the company's assessment centers for customers, included penetration testing, dynamic application security testing, and mobile application security analyses, designed to probe running applications as a real-world attacker would.

Eighty-three percent of the tested targets were web applications or systems, 12% were mobile applications, and the remainder were either source code or network systems/applications. Industries represented in the tests included software and internet, financial services, business services, manufacturing, media and entertainment, and healthcare.

"Cloud-based deployments, modern technology frameworks, and the rapid pace of delivery is forcing security groups to react more quickly as software is released," said Girish Janardhanudu, vice president, security consulting at Synopsys Software Integrity Group. "With insufficient AppSec resources in the market, organizations are leveraging application testing services such as those Synopsys provides in order to flexibly scale their security testing. We've seen a heavy increase in assessment demand throughout the pandemic."

Thirty percent of the targets had high-risk vulnerabilities, and 6% had critical-risk vulnerabilities. The results demonstrate that the best approach to security testing is to utilize the wide spectrum of tools available to help ensure an application or system is free from vulnerabilities. For example, 28% of the total test targets had some exposure to a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack, one of the most prevalent and destructive high-/critical-risk vulnerabilities impacting web applications. Many XSS vulnerabilities occur only when the application is running.

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