Not every cyberattack involves malware or exploits. Sometimes, attackers don’t break the rules—they simply abuse them. That’s the essence of Business Logic Abuse: exploiting how systems are intended to work in order to gain an unfair or unauthorized advantage.
What Is Business Logic Abuse?
Business logic defines the workflows and rules that power your application—things like checkout processes, user permissions, refund policies, or API rate limits.
Abuse happens when attackers manipulate these processes in unintended but valid ways, often without triggering traditional security defenses.
Examples include:
-
Requesting unlimited free trials by tweaking account creation flows
-
Circumventing shipping charges by modifying client-side logic
-
Exploiting refund or coupon systems for financial gain
-
Accessing restricted data by guessing predictable object IDs (IDOR)
It’s not an exploit in the technical sense—it’s a flaw in how the system thinks.
Why It’s Hard to Detect
-
No code injection or malware
-
Actions appear “valid” to the application
-
Most security tools don’t test business logic paths
-
Often discovered after financial or reputational damage
Business logic issues live above the stack—in design, not in code.
How to Defend Against It
-
Threat model the business layer—not just the technical stack
-
Conduct manual security testing focused on abuse scenarios
-
Use dynamic analysis to simulate how users (and abusers) interact
-
Monitor behavioral anomalies: unexpected but “valid” transactions
-
Include logic abuse in bug bounty scopes and red team exercises
Stay ahead of the Wave!
Comments