CWE-266: Incorrect Privilege Assignment

Description

A product incorrectly assigns a privilege to a particular actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor.

Extended Description

N/A

ThreatScore

Threat Mapped score: 0.0

Industry: Finiancial

Threat priority: Unclassified

Observed Examples (CVEs)

CVE: CVE-1999-1193

untrusted user placed in unix "wheel" group
CVE: CVE-2005-2741

Product allows users to grant themselves certain rights that can be used to escalate privileges.
CVE: CVE-2005-2496

Product uses group ID of a user instead of the group, causing it to run with different privileges. This is resultant from some other unknown issue.
CVE: CVE-2004-0274

Product mistakenly assigns a particular status to an entity, leading to increased privileges.

Related Attack Patterns (CAPEC)

N/A

Attack TTPs

N/A

Modes of Introduction

Phase	Note
Implementation	REALIZATION: This weakness is caused during implementation of an architectural security tactic.

Common Consequences

Impact: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity — Notes: A user can access restricted functionality and/or sensitive information that may include administrative functionality and user accounts.

Potential Mitigations

Architecture and Design: Very carefully manage the setting, management, and handling of privileges. Explicitly manage trust zones in the software. (N/A)
Architecture and Design: Run your code using the lowest privileges that are required to accomplish the necessary tasks [REF-76]. If possible, create isolated accounts with limited privileges that are only used for a single task. That way, a successful attack will not immediately give the attacker access to the rest of the software or its environment. For example, database applications rarely need to run as the database administrator, especially in day-to-day operations. (N/A)

Applicable Platforms

None (Not Language-Specific, Undetermined)

Demonstrative Examples

Intro: The following example demonstrates the weakness.

seteuid(0); /* do some stuff */ seteuid(getuid());

Intro: The following example demonstrates the weakness.

AccessController.doPrivileged(new PrivilegedAction() { public Object run() { // privileged code goes here, for example: System.loadLibrary("awt"); return null; // nothing to return }

Intro: This application sends a special intent with a flag that allows the receiving application to read a data file for backup purposes.

Body: Any malicious application can register to receive this intent. Because of the FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION included with the intent, the malicious receiver code can read the user's data.

Intent intent = new Intent(); intent.setAction("com.example.BackupUserData"); intent.setData(file_uri); intent.addFlags(FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION); sendBroadcast(intent);

Notes

No notes available.

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