Description

The software does not restrict or incorrectly restricts access to a resource from an unauthorized actor.

Extended Description

Access control involves the use of several protection mechanisms such as authentication (proving the identity of an actor) authorization (ensuring that a given actor can access a resource), and accountability (tracking of activities that were performed). When any mechanism is not applied or otherwise fails, attackers can compromise the security of the software by gaining privileges, reading sensitive information, executing commands, evading detection, etc.

There are two distinct behaviors that can introduce access control weaknesses:

Specification: incorrect privileges, permissions, ownership, etc. are explicitly specified for either the user or the resource (for example, setting a password file to be world-writable, or giving administrator capabilities to a guest user). This action could be performed by the program or the administrator.

Enforcement: the mechanism contains errors that prevent it from properly enforcing the specified access control requirements (e.g., allowing the user to specify their own privileges, or allowing a syntactically-incorrect ACL to produce insecure settings). This problem occurs within the program itself, in that it does not actually enforce the intended security policy that the administrator specifies.

Applicable Platforms
None

Time Of Introduction

• Architecture and Design
• Implementation
• Operation

Related Attack Patterns

• CAPEC-19

Common Consequences

Detection Methods
None

Potential Mitigations

Relationships

Demonstrative Examples
None

White Box Definitions
None

Black Box Definitions
None

Taxynomy Mappings

References:

1. M. Howard D. LeBlanc .Writing Secure Code 2nd Edition. Microsoft. Section:'Chapter 6, "Determining Appropriate Access Control" Page 171'. Published on 2002.
2. Michael Howard David LeBlanc John Viega .24 Deadly Sins of Software Security. McGraw-Hill. Section:'"Sin 17: Failure to Protect Stored Data." Page 253'. Published on 2010.