CWE-36Absolute Path Traversal

Description

Common consequences· 4

• Integrity / Confidentiality / Availability — Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands
  The attacker may be able to create or overwrite critical files that are used to execute code, such as programs or libraries.
• Integrity — Modify Files or Directories
  The attacker may be able to overwrite or create critical files, such as programs, libraries, or important data. If the targeted file is used for a security mechanism, then the attacker may be able to bypass that mechanism. For example, appending a new account at the end of a password file may allow an attacker to bypass authentication.
• Confidentiality — Read Files or Directories
  The attacker may be able read the contents of unexpected files and expose sensitive data. If the targeted file is used for a security mechanism, then the attacker may be able to bypass that mechanism. For example, by reading a password file, the attacker could conduct brute force password guessing attacks in order to break into an account on the system.
• Availability — DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart
  The attacker may be able to overwrite, delete, or corrupt unexpected critical files such as programs, libraries, or important data. This may prevent the product from working at all and in the case of a protection mechanisms such as authentication, it has the potential to lockout every user of the product.

Potential mitigations· 3

• [Implementation]
• [Implementation]Inputs should be decoded and canonicalized to the application's current internal representation before being validated (CWE-180). Make sure that the application does not decode the same input twice (CWE-174). Such errors could be used to bypass allowlist validation schemes by introducing dangerous inputs after they have been checked.
• [Operation]Use an application firewall that can detect attacks against this weakness. It can be beneficial in cases in which the code cannot be fixed (because it is controlled by a third party), as an emergency prevention measure while more comprehensive software assurance measures are applied, or to provide defense in depth [REF-1481].

Related CAPEC attack patterns· 1

Exploits (incoming)1

(incoming)15

Related by meaning· 6

Nearest entities by semantic similarity across the cs-graph corpus.