Summary
Game and SaaS backends face the same OWASP Top 10 risks as any web application, plus game-specific threats like save-file tampering and client-side cheat injection. A zero-trust posture — short-lived tokens, server-authoritative state, and encryption in transit and at rest — closes most of the practical attack surface.
1. Authentication & Token Design
Short-lived JWT access tokens (5–15 minutes) paired with rotating refresh tokens limit the damage window if a token leaks. Access tokens are safest kept in memory or an httpOnly, Secure, SameSite cookie — never in
localStorage, which is readable by any script that gets through an XSS gap.2. Server-Authoritative Game & Application State
Never trust a client-reported score, position, currency balance, or purchase result. The server recomputes and validates every state change it's asked to persist, and rate-limits + nonces on write endpoints prevent replay of a captured request.
3. OWASP-Aligned API Hardening
| Risk (OWASP API Top 10) | Practical Mitigation |
|---|---|
| Broken Object Level Authorization | Check resource ownership on every request; never trust an ID from the client alone |
| Excessive Data Exposure | Serialize explicit response DTOs instead of returning full database rows |
| Lack of Rate Limiting | Per-user and per-IP limits on auth, purchase, and write endpoints |
| Security Misconfiguration | Encrypt data at rest, enforce TLS everywhere, disable verbose error responses in production |