Detalle CWE-640

CWE-640

Weak Password Recovery Mechanism for Forgotten Password
Alto
Incomplete
2008-01-30
00h00 +00:00
2025-12-11
00h00 +00:00
CWE Mitre.org
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Nombre: Weak Password Recovery Mechanism for Forgotten Password

The product contains a mechanism for users to recover or change their passwords without knowing the original password, but the mechanism is weak.

Informaciones generales

Modos de introducción

Architecture and Design : COMMISSION: This weakness refers to an incorrect design related to an architectural security tactic.
Implementation

Plataformas aplicables

Lenguaje

Class: Not Language-Specific (Undetermined)

Consecuencias comunes

Alcance Impacto Probabilidad
Access ControlGain Privileges or Assume Identity

Note: An attacker could gain unauthorized access to the system by retrieving legitimate user's authentication credentials.
AvailabilityDoS: Resource Consumption (Other)

Note: An attacker could deny service to legitimate system users by launching a brute force attack on the password recovery mechanism using user ids of legitimate users.
Integrity
Other		Other

Note: The system's security functionality is turned against the system by the attacker.

Mitigaciones potenciales

Phases : Architecture and Design
Make sure that all input supplied by the user to the password recovery mechanism is thoroughly filtered and validated.
Phases : Architecture and Design
Do not use standard weak security questions and use several security questions.
Phases : Architecture and Design
Make sure that there is throttling on the number of incorrect answers to a security question. Disable the password recovery functionality after a certain (small) number of incorrect guesses.
Phases : Architecture and Design
Require that the user properly answers the security question prior to resetting their password and sending the new password to the e-mail address of record.
Phases : Architecture and Design
Never allow the user to control what e-mail address the new password will be sent to in the password recovery mechanism.
Phases : Architecture and Design
Assign a new temporary password rather than revealing the original password.

Notas de mapeo de vulnerabilidades

Justificación : This entry appears to be frequently misused for any weakness related to password changes, even though the name focuses on "Password Recovery" for a "forgotten" password.
Comentario : CWE-640 should only be used when there is a "password recovery" mechanism for forgotten passwords. Consider password-related entries under CWE-1390: Weak Authentication.

Patrones de ataque relacionados

CAPEC-ID Nombre del patrón de ataque
CAPEC-50 Password Recovery Exploitation
An attacker may take advantage of the application feature to help users recover their forgotten passwords in order to gain access into the system with the same privileges as the original user. Generally password recovery schemes tend to be weak and insecure.

Notas

This entry might be reclassified as a category or "loose composite," since it lists multiple specific errors that can make the mechanism weak. However, under view 1000, it could be a weakness under protection mechanism failure, although it is different from most PMF issues since it is related to a feature that is designed to bypass a protection mechanism (specifically, the lack of knowledge of a password).
This entry probably needs to be split; see extended description.

Referencias

REF-44

24 Deadly Sins of Software Security
Michael Howard, David LeBlanc, John Viega.

Envío

Nombre Organización Fecha Fecha de lanzamiento Version
Evgeny Lebanidze Cigital 2008-01-30 +00:00 2008-01-30 +00:00 Draft 8

Modificaciones

Nombre Organización Fecha Comentario
CWE Content Team MITRE 2008-09-08 +00:00 updated Common_Consequences, Description, Maintenance_Notes, Name, Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2009-03-10 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2009-05-27 +00:00 updated Related_Attack_Patterns
CWE Content Team MITRE 2010-02-16 +00:00 updated Taxonomy_Mappings
CWE Content Team MITRE 2010-12-13 +00:00 updated Common_Consequences
CWE Content Team MITRE 2011-03-29 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2011-06-01 +00:00 updated Common_Consequences
CWE Content Team MITRE 2012-05-11 +00:00 updated References, Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2012-10-30 +00:00 updated Potential_Mitigations
CWE Content Team MITRE 2014-06-23 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2014-07-30 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2015-12-07 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2017-11-08 +00:00 updated Applicable_Platforms, Demonstrative_Examples, Description, Enabling_Factors_for_Exploitation, Modes_of_Introduction, Observed_Examples, Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2018-03-27 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2019-06-20 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2021-10-28 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2022-10-13 +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
CWE Content Team MITRE 2023-06-29 +00:00 updated Mapping_Notes
CWE Content Team MITRE 2025-12-11 +00:00 updated Relationships, Weakness_Ordinalities
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