CWE

Insufficient Compartmentalization

ID: 653		Date: (C)2012-05-14   (M)2022-10-10
Type: weakness		Status: DRAFT
Abstraction Type: Base

Description

The product does not sufficiently compartmentalize functionality or processes that require different privilege levels, rights, or permissions.

Extended Description

When a weakness occurs in functionality that is accessible by lower-privileged users, then without strong boundaries, an attack might extend the scope of the damage to higher-privileged users.

Applicable Platforms
Language Class: All

Time Of Introduction

• Architecture and Design
• Implementation

Common Consequences

Scope	Technical Impact	Notes
Access_Control	Gain privileges / assume identity Bypass protection mechanism	The exploitation of a weakness in low-privileged areas of the software can be leveraged to reach higher-privileged areas without having to overcome any additional obstacles.

Detection Methods
None

Potential Mitigations

Phase	Strategy	Description	Effectiveness	Notes
Architecture and Design		Break up privileges between different modules, objects or entities. Minimize the interfaces between modules and require strong access control between them.

Relationships
There is a close association with CWE-250 (Execution with Unnecessary Privileges). CWE-653 is about providing separate components for each privilege; CWE-250 is about ensuring that each component has the least amount of privileges possible. In this fashion, compartmentalization becomes one mechanism for reducing privileges.

Related CWE	Type	View	Chain
CWE-653 ChildOf CWE-901	Category	CWE-888

Demonstrative Examples   (Details)

1. Single sign-on technology is intended to make it easier for users to access multiple resources or domains without having to authenticate each time. While this is highly convenient for the user and attempts to address problems with psychological acceptability, it also means that a compromise of a user's credentials can provide immediate access to all other resources or domains.
2. The traditional UNIX privilege model provides root with arbitrary access to all resources, but root is frequently the only user that has privileges. As a result, administrative tasks require root privileges, even if those tasks are limited to a small area, such as updating user man pages. Some UNIX flavors have a "bin" user that is the owner of system executables, but since root relies on executables owned by bin, a compromise of the bin account can be leveraged for root privileges by modifying a bin-owned executable, such as CVE-2007-4238.

White Box Definitions
None

Black Box Definitions
None

Taxynomy Mappings
None

References:

1. Jerome H. Saltzer Michael D. Schroeder .The Protection of Information in Computer Systems. Proceedings of the IEEE 63. Published on September, 1975.
2. Sean Barnum Michael Gegick .Separation of Privilege. Published on 2005-12-06.