The product does not adequately verify the identity of actors at both ends of a communication channel, or does not adequately ensure the integrity of the channel, in a way that allows the channel to be accessed or influenced by an actor that is not an endpoint.
In order to establish secure communication between two parties, it is often important to adequately verify the identity of entities at each end of the communication channel. Inadequate or inconsistent verification may result in insufficient or incorrect identification of either communicating entity. This can have negative consequences such as misplaced trust in the entity at the other end of the channel. An attacker can leverage this by interposing between the communicating entities and masquerading as the original entity. In the absence of sufficient verification of identity, such an attacker can eavesdrop and potentially modify the communication between the original entities.
Threat Mapped score: 0.0
Industry: Finiancial
Threat priority: Unclassified
CVE: CVE-2014-1266
chain: incorrect "goto" in Apple SSL product bypasses certificate validation, allowing Adversry-in-the-Middle (AITM) attack (Apple "goto fail" bug). CWE-705 (Incorrect Control Flow Scoping) -> CWE-561 (Dead Code) -> CWE-295 (Improper Certificate Validation) -> CWE-393 (Return of Wrong Status Code) -> CWE-300 (Channel Accessible by Non-Endpoint).
| Phase | Note |
|---|---|
| Architecture and Design | REALIZATION: This weakness is caused during implementation of an architectural security tactic. |
Intro: In the Java snippet below, data is sent over an unencrypted channel to a remote server.
Body: By eavesdropping on the communication channel or posing as the endpoint, an attacker would be able to read all of the transmitted data.
Socket sock; PrintWriter out; try { sock = new Socket(REMOTE_HOST, REMOTE_PORT); out = new PrintWriter(echoSocket.getOutputStream(), true); // Write data to remote host via socket output stream. ... }