Improper Handling of Insufficient Permissions or Privileges |
Weakness ID: 280 (Weakness Base) | Status: Draft |
Description Summary
Reference | Description |
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CVE-2003-0501 | Special file system allows attackers to prevent ownership/permission change of certain entries by opening the entries before calling a setuid program. |
CVE-2004-0148 | FTP server places a user in the root directory when the user's permissions prevent access to his/her own home directory. |
Very carefully manage the setting, management and handling of permissions. Explicitly manage trust zones in the software. |
Phase: Architecture and Design Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design and that the compartmentalization serves to allow for and further reinforce privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide when it is appropriate to use and to drop system privileges, but they should also plan for cases in which those privileges might fail. |
Phase: Implementation Always check to see if you have successfully accessed a resource or system functionality, and use proper error handling if it is unsuccessful. Do this even when you are operating in a highly privileged mode, because errors or environmental conditions might still cause a failure. For example, environments with highly granular permissions/privilege models, such as Windows or Linux capabilities, can cause unexpected failures. |
Nature | Type | ID | Name | View(s) this relationship pertains to![]() |
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ChildOf | ![]() | 275 | Permission Issues | Development Concepts (primary)699 |
ChildOf | ![]() | 703 | Failure to Handle Exceptional Conditions | Research Concepts (primary)1000 |
PeerOf | ![]() | 636 | Not Failing Securely ('Failing Open') | Research Concepts1000 |
CanAlsoBe | ![]() | 274 | Improper Handling of Insufficient Privileges | Research Concepts1000 |
This can be both primary and resultant. When primary, it can expose a variety of weaknesses because a resource might not have the expected state, and subsequent operations might fail. It is often resultant from Unchecked Error Condition (CWE-391). |
This type of issue is under-studied, since researchers often concentrate on whether an object has too many permissions, instead of not enough. These weaknesses are likely to appear in environments with fine-grained models for permissions and privileges, which can include operating systems and other large-scale software packages. However, even highly simplistic permission/privilege models are likely to contain these issues if the developer has not considered the possibility of access failure. |
Within the context of vulnerability theory, privileges and permissions are two sides of the same coin. Privileges are associated with actors, and permissions are associated with resources. To perform access control, at some point the software makes a decision about whether the actor (and the privileges that have been assigned to that actor) is allowed to access the resource (based on the permissions that have been specified for that resource). |
Mapped Taxonomy Name | Node ID | Fit | Mapped Node Name |
---|---|---|---|
PLOVER | Fails poorly due to insufficient permissions | ||
WASC | 17 | Improper Filesystem Permissions |
Submissions | ||||
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Submission Date | Submitter | Organization | Source | |
PLOVER | 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 Maintenance Notes, Relationships, Relationship Notes, Taxonomy Mappings | ||||
2009-03-10 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | Internal | |
updated Description, Name, Theoretical Notes | ||||
Previous Entry Names | ||||
Change Date | Previous Entry Name | |||
2009-03-10 | Failure to Handle Insufficient Permissions or Privileges | |||