security-review-owasp-choosing-and-using-security-questions

To review authentication recovery flows for account takeover risks, trace identity and authorization context across services, verify rate limits and audit trails, and separate confirmed issues from review gaps in security-question and step-up paths.

Security weaknesses in account recovery and step-up authentication flows include weak identity proof, fallback bypasses, missing notifications, and inadequate rate limits that allow attackers to compromise trust boundaries and escalate privileges.

Trace trust boundaries across service-to-service authentication paths by evaluating user identity claims, background jobs, and delegated actions to ensure authorization context is preserved and verified across all privilege boundaries.

You can assess self-service profile change flows for identity confusion vulnerabilities by analyzing the identity proof mechanisms, verifying authorization context propagation, and checking for missing operational controls like audit trails.

Limitations of relying on security questions for account recovery include susceptibility to weak identity proof, fallback bypasses across trust boundaries, and missing rate limits that enable automated takeover attempts if safe failure handling is absent.