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Description

The system’s authorization functionality does not prevent one user from gaining access to another user’s data or record by modifying the key value identifying the data.

Modes of Introduction:

– Architecture and Design

 

Likelihood of Exploit: High

 

Related Weaknesses

CWE-863
CWE-863
CWE-284

 

Consequences

Access Control: Bypass Protection Mechanism

Access control checks for specific user data or functionality can be bypassed.

Access Control: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity

Horizontal escalation of privilege is possible (one user can view/modify information of another user).

Access Control: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity

Vertical escalation of privilege is possible if the user-controlled key is actually a flag that indicates administrator status, allowing the attacker to gain administrative access.

 

Potential Mitigations

Phase: Architecture and Design

Description: 

For each and every data access, ensure that the user has sufficient privilege to access the record that is being requested.

Phase: Architecture and Design, Implementation

Description: 

Make sure that the key that is used in the lookup of a specific user’s record is not controllable externally by the user or that any tampering can be detected.

Phase: Architecture and Design

Description: 

Use encryption in order to make it more difficult to guess other legitimate values of the key or associate a digital signature with the key so that the server can verify that there has been no tampering.

CVE References