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Description
A product performs a series of non-atomic actions to switch between contexts that cross privilege or other security boundaries, but a race condition allows an attacker to modify or misrepresent the product’s behavior during the switch.
This is commonly seen in web browser vulnerabilities in which the attacker can perform certain actions while the browser is transitioning from a trusted to an untrusted domain, or vice versa, and the browser performs the actions on one domain using the trust level and resources of the other domain.
Modes of Introduction:
– Architecture and Design
Related Weaknesses
CWE-362
CWE-364
Consequences
Integrity, Confidentiality: Modify Application Data, Read Application Data
Potential Mitigations
CVE References
- CVE-2009-1837
- Chain: race condition (CWE-362) from improper handling of a page transition in web client while an applet is loading (CWE-368) leads to use after free (CWE-416)
- CVE-2004-2260
- Browser updates address bar as soon as user clicks on a link instead of when the page has loaded, allowing spoofing by redirecting to another page using onUnload method. ** this is one example of the role of “hooks” and context switches, and should be captured somehow – also a race condition of sorts **
- CVE-2004-0191
- XSS when web browser executes Javascript events in the context of a new page while it’s being loaded, allowing interaction with previous page in different domain.
- CVE-2004-2491
- Web browser fills in address bar of clicked-on link before page has been loaded, and doesn’t update afterward.
