New CS proposal: Workflow & State Transition Abuse Prevention Cheat Sheet

[balaakasam]

What is the proposed Cheat Sheet about?

This Cheat Sheet will provide practical guidance for identifying and preventing workflow and state-transition abuse in modern applications. It focuses on architectural attack paths where attackers exploit legitimate API sequences, state desynchronization, and feature lifecycle changes rather than traditional vulnerabilities.

What security issues are commonly encountered related to this area?

-Out-of-order API execution enabling unauthorized actions
-State desynchronization between frontend and backend services
-Token reuse across workflow boundaries
-Feature flag and kill-switch security regression
-Orphaned backend capabilities after UI redesigns
-Microservice authorization drift across deployment cycles

What is the objective of the Cheat Sheet?

The objective is to provide developers, architects, and security professionals with a consolidated set of patterns, prevention techniques, and testing strategies to detect and eliminate workflow abuse and state-transition vulnerabilities that are not addressed by traditional vulnerability scanners.

What other resources exist in this area?

OWASP Top 10, WSTG, and the API Security Top 10 discuss broken access control and business logic flaws, but none provide dedicated prevention guidance for architectural workflow abuse and security regression introduced by feature flags or distributed state transitions.
This content complements existing projects rather than duplicating them and would not be suitable as a testing guide section because it focuses on prevention and design patterns rather than exploitation techniques.

[SuyashJain17]

This is a very relevant and timely proposal.

Workflow and state-transition abuse is something I’ve seen repeatedly in real-world systems, especially in modern architectures that rely on APIs, microservices, and feature flags. These issues often slip past traditional vulnerability scanning because the APIs themselves are “working as designed,” just not in the intended order or context.

I particularly like the focus on:

• out-of-order API execution,
• frontend/backend state desynchronization,
• and security regressions introduced by feature flags or UI redesigns.

A dedicated prevention-focused cheat sheet makes a lot of sense here, as most existing OWASP resources discuss these problems at a high level under broken access control or business logic flaws, but don’t give concrete architectural guidance on how to design workflows safely.

If helpful, I’d be happy to contribute by:

• helping draft a clear structure or outline for the cheat sheet,
• adding practical examples (e.g., checkout flows, approval workflows, feature-flag rollouts),
• or reviewing sections for clarity from a developer perspective.

Thanks for proposing this — I think it would be a valuable addition to the Cheat Sheet Series.

[szh]

I'm curious what the other maintainers think, but I'm not convinced this warrants its own cheat sheet rather than sections in other existing cheat sheets. Remember that cheat sheets aren't supposed to be full architectural guides.

[SuyashJain17]

Thanks for raising this — it’s a fair question. The intent isn’t a broad architectural guide, but a tightly scoped, prevention-focused reference for recurring workflow and state-transition issues that span multiple existing cheat sheets. I’m happy to keep the scope narrow and share a short outline to ensure it stays within cheat-sheet boundaries.

[balaakasam]

Thank you both, this is helpful context.

I completely agree that this should not become a broad architectural guide. My intent is to keep this as a narrow, prevention-focused reference that complements existing cheat sheets rather than duplicates them.
Here is a proposed tight scope outline to demonstrate how limited the content would be:

Proposed Cheat Sheet Scope (8–10 pages maximum):

1. Problem Definition (½ page)
   -What “workflow & state-transition abuse” means in practice
   -How it differs from IDOR, BFLA, and classic business-logic flaws
2. Common Failure Patterns (2 pages)
   -Out-of-order API execution
   -Frontend/backend state desynchronization
   -Feature-flag regressions reopening protected flows
3. Prevention Checklist (3 pages)
   -Server-side state machines
   -Sequence validation & idempotency
   -Token / scope binding to workflow state
4. Targeted Examples (2–3 pages)
   -Checkout / payment flows
   -Approval / escalation workflows
   -Feature-flag rollout regression scenario
5. Testing & Detection Tips (1–2 pages)
   -Simple validation techniques teams can adopt immediately

No architecture frameworks, no modeling methodologies, just actionable prevention patterns that teams can implement.

If that scope feels acceptable, I’m happy to share an initial draft version soon and welcome review or contributions from anyone interested.

[nickchomey]

Maintainers: I'm pretty sure this is just some LLMs talking to each other. The language (and punctuation) itself is dripping with red flags, but also things like "I agree, this shouldnt be a broad architectural guide... I propose 8-10 pages", and the premature eagerness to always jump immediately to a PR without any real discussion.

[szh]

Thank you @nickchomey. I agree, it strongly smells of AI slop. There's been a huge increase in AI driven attempted "contributions" that have been wasting our time. I'm going to close this for now until it can be clarified otherwise.

[jmanico]

Agreed, thanks for closing this out