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.
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.
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.
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!