VulnScan

CWE-266: Incorrect Privilege Assignment

What is CWE-266?

MITRE CWE

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

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Official definition

MITRE CWE

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

Detailed description

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Characteristics

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Modes of introduction

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

Common consequences

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  • Access Control

    Gain Privileges or Assume Identity

    A user can access restricted functionality and/or sensitive information that may include administrative functionality and user accounts.

Mitigations

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  • Architecture and Design, OperationVery carefully manage the setting, management, and handling of privileges. Explicitly manage trust zones in the software.
  • Architecture and Design, Operation · Environment HardeningRun 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.

Detection methods

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Representative vulnerabilities

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These examples illustrate this CWE entry and are not an exhaustive list of related vulnerabilities.

  • CVE-1999-1193untrusted user placed in unix "wheel" group
  • CVE-2005-2741Product allows users to grant themselves certain rights that can be used to escalate privileges.
  • CVE-2005-2496Product 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-2004-0274Product mistakenly assigns a particular status to an entity, leading to increased privileges.

Sources and references

References

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