What the OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications is

The OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications is a community catalog of the most important LLM security risks, maintained by OWASP. It is a prioritization aid, not a standard you "pass." Its job is to give builders a shared vocabulary and a sensible order to address risks — starting with the ones that are both common and severe.

Treat it as a map, not a badge. Citing "we follow the Top 10" is reasonable shorthand for "we considered these risks"; it is not a claim of conformance or certification.

LLM01 — Prompt Injection (the headline)

Prompt injection is LLM01, the top item, because it is structural and high-impact. As covered elsewhere, it arises whenever untrusted input shares a context window with trusted instructions. OWASP keeps it first because the underlying cause has no clean model-level fix yet, so apps must defend around it.

This is the category PromptShield's report is built around: it flags the injection patterns in your sample input and gives a hardening checklist mapped to the failure modes LLM01 describes.

Adjacent categories that matter

Injection rarely acts alone. Several neighboring Top-10 items are where an injection's effect lands:

  • LLM02 — Insecure Output Handling: if model output (possibly injection-influenced) is passed to other systems without validation, the damage spreads.
  • LLM03 — Training Data Poisoning: relevant if your model or retrieval corpus can be poisoned with malicious instructions.
  • LLM05 — Supply Chain: compromised components, including retrieved content sources, can carry indirect injection.
  • LLM06 — Excessive Agency: too much freedom for the model to act on its own turns a successful injection into an action.

Reading LLM01 together with these shows why scanning is necessary but not sufficient.

How to map PromptShield's report to the Top 10

PromptShield's report names the patterns that fired in your sample input. You can map those to the catalog: override/exfiltration/tool-abuse patterns → LLM01; inputs that try to command downstream actions → LLM02/LLM06; samples describing retrieved or third-party content → LLM03/LLM05. The hardening checklist then becomes a concrete list of Top-10 items to close.

This mapping is a working aid, not an audit. It helps you connect a fired pattern to the broader risk it represents, so fixes are deliberate rather than scattershot.

The Top 10 is a catalog, not a certificate

A clean scan and a read of the Top 10 do not make an app "OWASP-compliant" — there is no such certificate for the LLM Top 10. Use it to prioritize and communicate risk to your team and users honestly.

PromptShield supports that honest communication: it tells you which known patterns your sample input triggers and what to harden. It does not certify safety, and it does not replace a security team or a professional review.

Authoritative references

  • OWASP Top 10 for Large Language Model Applications (2025): https://owasp.org/www-project-top-10-for-large-language-model-applications/
  • OWASP (general application security): https://owasp.org/