The product attempts to drop privileges but does not check or incorrectly checks to see if the drop succeeded.
If the drop fails, the product will continue to run with the raised privileges, which might provide additional access to unprivileged users.
| Nature | Mapping | Type | ID | Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChildOf | Allowed-with-Review | C | 754 | Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions |
| ChildOf | Allowed-with-Review | C | 271 | Privilege Dropping / Lowering Errors |
| PeerOf | Allowed | B | 252 | Unchecked Return Value |
| Nature | Mapping | Type | ID | Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MemberOf | Prohibited | C | 265 | Privilege Issues |
| MemberOf | Prohibited | C | 748 | CERT C Secure Coding Standard (2008) Appendix - POSIX (POS) |
| MemberOf | Prohibited | V | 884 | CWE Cross-section |
| MemberOf | Prohibited | C | 962 | SFP Secondary Cluster: Unchecked Status Condition |
| MemberOf | Prohibited | C | 1011 | Authorize Actors |
| MemberOf | Prohibited | C | 1171 | SEI CERT C Coding Standard - Guidelines 50. POSIX (POS) |
| MemberOf | Prohibited | C | 1396 | Comprehensive Categorization: Access Control |
| Nature | Mapping | Type | ID | Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MemberOf | Prohibited | BS | BOSS-273 | Medium likelihood of exploit |
| MemberOf | Prohibited | BS | BOSS-280 | Separation of Privilege Strategy |
| MemberOf | Prohibited | BS | BOSS-294 | Not Language-Specific Weaknesses |
| MemberOf | Prohibited | BS | BOSS-322 | Hide Activities (impact) |
| MemberOf | Prohibited | BS | BOSS-332 | Gain Privileges or Assume Identity (impact) |
| Nature | Mapping | Type | ID | Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MemberOf | Prohibited | C | 1011 | Authorize Actors |
| Nature | Mapping | Type | ID | Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MemberOf | Prohibited | C | 1171 | SEI CERT C Coding Standard - Guidelines 50. POSIX (POS) |
| Nature | Mapping | Type | ID | Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MemberOf | Prohibited | C | 265 | Privilege Issues |
| Nature | Mapping | Type | ID | Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MemberOf | Prohibited | C | 962 | SFP Secondary Cluster: Unchecked Status Condition |
In Windows based environments that have access control, impersonation is used so that access checks can be performed on a client identity by a server with higher privileges. By impersonating the client, the server is restricted to client-level security -- although in different threads it may have much higher privileges.
| Scope | Likelihood | Impact | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Access Control | N/A | Gain Privileges or Assume Identity | If privileges are not dropped, neither are access rights of the user. Often these rights can be prevented from being dropped. |
| Access ControlNon-Repudiation | N/A | Gain Privileges or Assume IdentityHide Activities | If privileges are not dropped, in some cases the system may record actions as the user which is being impersonated rather than the impersonator. |
If privileges are not dropped, neither are access rights of the user. Often these rights can be prevented from being dropped.
If privileges are not dropped, in some cases the system may record actions as the user which is being impersonated rather than the impersonator.
Compartmentalize the system to have "safe" areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.
Check the results of all functions that return a value and verify that the value is expected.
Checking the return value of the function will typically be sufficient, however beware of race conditions (CWE-362) in a concurrent environment.
In Windows, make sure that the process token has the SeImpersonatePrivilege(Microsoft Server 2003). Code that relies on impersonation for security must ensure that the impersonation succeeded, i.e., that a proper privilege demotion happened.
REALIZATION: This weakness is caused during implementation of an architectural security tactic.
This issue is likely to occur in restrictive environments in which the operating system or application provides fine-grained control over privilege management.
This code attempts to take on the privileges of a user before creating a file, thus avoiding performing the action with unnecessarily high privileges:
The call to ImpersonateNamedPipeClient may fail, but the return value is not checked. If the call fails, the code may execute with higher privileges than intended. In this case, an attacker could exploit this behavior to write a file to a location that the attacker does not have access to.
| Reference | Description |
|---|---|
| CVE-2006-4447 | Program does not check return value when invoking functions to drop privileges, which could leave users with higher privileges than expected by forcing those functions to fail. |
| CVE-2006-2916 | Program does not check return value when invoking functions to drop privileges, which could leave users with higher privileges than expected by forcing those functions to fail. |
| Ordinality | Description |
|---|---|
| Primary | N/A |
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.)
N/A
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.
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.
| Taxonomy Name | Entry ID | Fit | Entry Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| CLASP | N/A | N/A | Failure to check whether privileges were dropped successfully |
| CERT C Secure Coding | POS37-C | Exact | Ensure that privilege relinquishment is successful |
| Software Fault Patterns | SFP4 | N/A | Unchecked Status Condition |
| ID | Name |
|---|