Improper Following of Chain of Trust for Certificate Validation |
Weakness ID: 296 (Weakness Base) | Status: Draft |
Description Summary
Scope | Effect |
---|---|
Authentication | Exploitation of this flaw can lead to the trust of data that may have originated with a spoofed source. |
Accountability | Data, requests, or actions taken by the attacking entity can be carried out as a spoofed benign entity. |
Example 1
Phase: Architecture and Design Ensure that proper certificate checking is included in the system design. |
Phase: Implementation Understand, and properly implement all checks necessary to ensure the integrity of certificate trust integrity. |
If a system fails to follow the chain of trust of a certificate to a root server, the certificate loses all usefulness as a metric of trust. Essentially, the trust gained from a certificate is derived from a chain of trust -- with a reputable trusted entity at the end of that list. The end user must trust that reputable source, and this reputable source must vouch for the resource in question through the medium of the certificate. In some cases, this trust traverses several entities who vouch for one another. The entity trusted by the end user is at one end of this trust chain, while the certificate wielding resource is at the other end of the chain. If the user receives a certificate at the end of one of these trust chains and then proceeds to check only that the first link in the chain, no real trust has been derived, since you must traverse the chain to a trusted source to verify the certificate. |
Nature | Type | ID | Name | View(s) this relationship pertains to |
---|---|---|---|---|
ChildOf | Category | 295 | Certificate Issues | Development Concepts (primary)699 |
ChildOf | Weakness Class | 573 | Failure to Follow Specification | Research Concepts (primary)1000 |
ChildOf | Category | 724 | OWASP Top Ten 2004 Category A3 - Broken Authentication and Session Management | Weaknesses in OWASP Top Ten (2004) (primary)711 |
ChildOf | Weakness Class | 754 | Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions | Research Concepts1000 |
PeerOf | Weakness Base | 297 | Improper Validation of Host-specific Certificate Data | Research Concepts1000 |
PeerOf | Weakness Base | 298 | Improper Validation of Certificate Expiration | Research Concepts1000 |
PeerOf | Weakness Base | 299 | Improper Check for Certificate Revocation | Research Concepts1000 |
PeerOf | Weakness Base | 322 | Key Exchange without Entity Authentication | Research Concepts1000 |
PeerOf | Weakness Base | 370 | Missing Check for Certificate Revocation after Initial Check | Research Concepts1000 |
Mapped Taxonomy Name | Node ID | Fit | Mapped Node Name |
---|---|---|---|
CLASP | Failure to follow chain of trust in certificate validation |
Submissions | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Submission Date | Submitter | Organization | Source | |
CLASP | Externally Mined | |||
Modifications | ||||
Modification Date | Modifier | Organization | Source | |
2008-07-01 | Eric Dalci | Cigital | External | |
updated Time of Introduction | ||||
2008-09-08 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | Internal | |
updated Common Consequences, Relationships, Other Notes, Taxonomy Mappings | ||||
2009-03-10 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | Internal | |
updated Description, Name, Relationships | ||||
2009-05-27 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | Internal | |
updated Demonstrative Examples | ||||
2009-07-27 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | Internal | |
updated Demonstrative Examples | ||||
Previous Entry Names | ||||
Change Date | Previous Entry Name | |||
2009-03-10 | Failure to Follow Chain of Trust in Certificate Validation | |||