Nearly all apps vulnerable to exploit

A new report found that an overwhelming majority of applications – 99 percent – revealed vulnerabilities when tested.

Cenzic, a Campbell, Calif.-based application security company, on Wednesday released the “Cenzic Application Vulnerability Trends Report 2013,” which analyzed data collected by its research team. In addition to 99 percent of all applications tested in 2012 having one or more serious security vulnerabilities, the firm found that the median number of vulnerabilities per application was 13.

According to the report, cross-site scripting (XSS) flaws were detected most often, accounting for 26 percent of all app vulnerabilities last year. When an attacker leverages an XSS vulnerability to exploit an app, they inject it with malicious code to potentially access private user data stored in the browser, like cookies or session tokens.