OWASP — Top 10 for LLM Apps: what to fix first
• Category: Security
- The OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications is useful because it names failure modes teams actually ship (not just “AI is scary”).
- If you can only fix three things first: Prompt injection, Sensitive info disclosure, and Excessive agency.
- “Insecure output handling” matters when your model output crosses a trust boundary (SQL, shell, templates, browsers, ticketing systems).
- Supply chain risk here includes: model providers, prompt/tooling libraries, connectors, and third-party data sources feeding retrieval.
- “Overreliance” is a security issue when humans stop verifying: it turns plausible-but-wrong output into privileged actions.
- The strongest pattern across the Top 10: restrict what the model can do, and require verification at boundaries.
Why it matters
LLM apps often blend natural language with automation. That combination is exactly what attackers love: low-friction input channels connected to high-privilege actions. OWASP’s list gives you a common vocabulary to drive engineering changes (not just policy).
What to do
- Define tool permissions: explicit allowlists per tool and per action; no “general web access” by default.
- Put a guardrail boundary between model output and execution (validation + escaping + schema enforcement).
- Assume prompt injection will happen: isolate instructions from untrusted content and add adversarial tests in CI.
- Minimize data exposure: least-privilege retrieval scopes; redact secrets from logs; don’t ship raw internal docs to the model.
- Add human approval for state-changing actions (payments, code merges, IAM changes) until you have strong monitoring + rollback.