ClassDraft

CWE-441Unintended Proxy or Intermediary ('Confused Deputy')

Category: other

Description

The product receives a request, message, or directive from an upstream component, but the product does not sufficiently preserve the original source of the request before forwarding the request to an external actor that is outside of the product's control sphere. This causes the product to appear to be the source of the request, leading it to act as a proxy or other intermediary between the upstream component and the external actor.

Common consequences· 1

  • Non-Repudiation / Access Control — Gain Privileges or Assume Identity, Hide Activities, Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands

Potential mitigations· 2

  • [Architecture and Design]Enforce the use of strong mutual authentication mechanism between the two parties.
  • [Architecture and Design]Whenever a product is an intermediary or proxy for transactions between two other components, the proxy core should not drop the identity of the initiator of the transaction. The immutability of the identity of the initiator must be maintained and should be forwarded all the way to the target.

Related CAPEC attack patterns· 2

CAPEC-219CAPEC-465

References

  1. https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/441.html

Exploits (incoming)2

TypeTargetConfidenceTier
AttackPatternXML Routing Detour Attackscapec-219100%live
AttackPatternTransparent Proxy Abusecapec-465100%live

Compliance frameworks addressing this (incoming)1

TypeTargetConfidenceTier
ComplianceControlowasp_api_top10-api07100%live

(incoming)18

TypeTargetConfidenceTier
VulnerabilityCVE-2025-11393cve-2025-113930%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2025-25306cve-2025-253060%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2025-47269cve-2025-472690%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2025-48579cve-2025-485790%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2025-62718cve-2025-627180%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2025-64123cve-2025-641230%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-0008cve-2026-00080%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-0013cve-2026-00130%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-0021cve-2026-00210%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-0107cve-2026-01070%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-23751cve-2026-237510%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-24470cve-2026-244700%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-33768cve-2026-337680%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-39906cve-2026-399060%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-42043cve-2026-420430%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-42313cve-2026-423130%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-7381cve-2026-73810%live
KEVEntryZK Framework AuUploader Unspecified Vulnerabilitykev-cve-2022-365370%live

Related by meaning· 6

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

CWE
Interpretation Conflict
CWE
Use of Incorrectly-Resolved Name or Reference
CWE
Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in a Command ('Command Injection')
CWE
Incorrectly Specified Destination in a Communication Channel
CWE
Incorrect Privilege Assignment
CWE
Exposure of Resource to Wrong Sphere
Sourced from MITRE CWE 4.20. Curated for EU compliance use cases by Adam Lundqvist, Founder at SQUR.