CWE-280 Details

CWE-280

Improper Handling of Insufficient Permissions or Privileges
Draft
2006-07-19
00h00 +00:00
2025-12-11
00h00 +00:00
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Name: Improper Handling of Insufficient Permissions or Privileges

The product does not handle or incorrectly handles when it has insufficient privileges to access resources or functionality as specified by their permissions. This may cause it to follow unexpected code paths that may leave the product in an invalid state.

Allgemeine Informationen

Einführungsmodi

Implementation : REALIZATION: This weakness is caused during implementation of an architectural security tactic.

Anwendbare Plattformen

Sprache

Class: Not Language-Specific (Undetermined)

Häufige Konsequenzen

Bereich Auswirkung Wahrscheinlichkeit
OtherOther, Alter Execution Logic

Beobachtete Beispiele

Referenzen Beschreibung

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 the their own home directory.

Mögliche Gegenmaßnahmen

Phases : Architecture and Design
Phases : 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.

Erkennungsmethoden

Automated Static Analysis

Automated 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.)

Hinweise zur Schwachstellen-Zuordnung

Begründung : This CWE entry is at the Base level of abstraction, which is a preferred level of abstraction for mapping to the root causes of vulnerabilities.
Kommentar : Carefully read both the name and description to ensure that this mapping is an appropriate fit. Do not try to 'force' a mapping to a lower-level Base/Variant simply to comply with this preferred level of abstraction.

Hinweise

CWE-280 and CWE-274 are too similar. It is likely that CWE-274 will be deprecated in the future.
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).
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).
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.

Einreichung

Name Organisation Datum Veröffentlichungsdatum Version
PLOVER 2006-07-19 +00:00 2006-07-19 +00:00 Draft 3

Änderungen

Name Organisation Datum Kommentar
Eric Dalci Cigital 2008-07-01 +00:00 updated Time_of_Introduction
CWE Content Team MITRE 2008-09-08 +00:00 updated Maintenance_Notes, Relationships, Relationship_Notes, Taxonomy_Mappings
CWE Content Team MITRE 2009-03-10 +00:00 updated Description, Name, Theoretical_Notes
CWE Content Team MITRE 2010-02-16 +00:00 updated Taxonomy_Mappings
CWE Content Team MITRE 2011-06-01 +00:00 updated Common_Consequences
CWE Content Team MITRE 2012-05-11 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2012-10-30 +00:00 updated Potential_Mitigations
CWE Content Team MITRE 2014-07-30 +00:00 updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
CWE Content Team MITRE 2017-11-08 +00:00 updated Applicable_Platforms, Modes_of_Introduction, Observed_Examples, Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2019-06-20 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2020-02-24 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2020-12-10 +00:00 updated Potential_Mitigations
CWE Content Team MITRE 2021-03-15 +00:00 updated Maintenance_Notes
CWE Content Team MITRE 2021-10-28 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2023-01-31 +00:00 updated Description
CWE Content Team MITRE 2023-04-27 +00:00 updated Relationships, Time_of_Introduction
CWE Content Team MITRE 2023-06-29 +00:00 updated Mapping_Notes
CWE Content Team MITRE 2025-12-11 +00:00 updated Detection_Factors, Relationships, Weakness_Ordinalities