CWE-648Incorrect Use of Privileged APIs

Description

Common consequences· 3

• Access Control — Gain Privileges or Assume Identity
  An attacker may be able to elevate privileges.
• Confidentiality — Read Application Data
  An attacker may be able to obtain sensitive information.
• Integrity / Confidentiality / Availability — Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands
  An attacker may be able to execute code.

Potential mitigations· 5

• [Implementation]Before calling privileged APIs, always ensure that the assumptions made by the privileged code hold true prior to making the call.
• [Architecture and Design]Know architecture and implementation weaknesses of the privileged APIs and make sure to account for these weaknesses before calling the privileged APIs to ensure that they can be called safely.
• [Implementation]If privileged APIs make certain assumptions about data, context or state validity that are passed by the caller, the calling code must ensure that these assumptions have been validated prior to making the call.
• [Implementation]If privileged APIs do not shed their privilege prior to returning to the calling code, then calling code needs to shed these privileges immediately and safely right after the call to the privileged APIs. In particular, the calling code needs to ensure that a privileged thread of execution will never be returned to the user or made available to user-controlled processes.
• [Implementation]Only call privileged APIs from safe, consistent and expected state.

Related CAPEC attack patterns· 2

Exploits (incoming)2

(incoming)13

Related by meaning· 6

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