VulnScan

CWE-269: Improper Privilege Management

What is CWE-269?

MITRE CWE

The product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor.

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Official definition

MITRE CWE

The product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor.

Detailed description

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Characteristics

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Modes of introduction

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

Common consequences

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  • Access Control

    Gain Privileges or Assume Identity

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 · Separation of PrivilegeFollow the principle of least privilege when assigning access rights to entities in a software system.
  • Architecture and Design · Separation of PrivilegeConsider following the principle of separation of privilege. Require multiple conditions to be met before permitting access to a system resource.

Detection methods

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  • Automated Static AnalysisAutomated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)Effectiveness: High

Representative vulnerabilities

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

  • CVE-2001-1555Terminal privileges are not reset when a user logs out.
  • CVE-2001-1514Does not properly pass security context to child processes in certain cases, allows privilege escalation.
  • CVE-2001-0128Does not properly compute roles.
  • 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.
  • CVE-2007-4217FTP client program on a certain OS runs with setuid privileges and has a buffer overflow. Most clients do not need extra privileges, so an overflow is not a vulnerability for those clients.
  • CVE-2007-5159OS incorrectly installs a program with setuid privileges, allowing users to gain privileges.
  • CVE-2008-4638Composite: application running with high privileges (CWE-250) allows user to specify a restricted file to process, which generates a parsing error that leaks the contents of the file (CWE-209).
  • CVE-2007-3931Installation script installs some programs as setuid when they shouldn't be.
  • CVE-2002-1981Roles have access to dangerous procedures (Accessible entities).
  • CVE-2002-1671Untrusted object/method gets access to clipboard (Accessible entities).
  • CVE-2000-0315Traceroute program allows unprivileged users to modify source address of packet (Accessible entities).
  • CVE-2000-0506User with capability can prevent setuid program from dropping privileges (Unsafe privileged actions).

Sources and references

References

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