Weakness · High
CWE-114: Process Control
What it is
Executing commands or loading libraries from an untrusted source or in an untrusted environment can cause an application to execute malicious commands (and payloads) on behalf of an attacker.
- Severity (our rating)
- High
- Likelihood of exploit
- Not rated by MITRE
- Introduced during
- Implementation
- Exploited in the wild
- 1 known exploited CVE
In more detail
Process control vulnerabilities take two forms: An attacker can change the command that the program executes: the attacker explicitly controls what the command is. An attacker can change the environment in which the command executes: the attacker implicitly controls what the command means. Process control vulnerabilities of the first type occur when either data enters the application from an untrusted source and the data is used as part of a string representing a command that is executed by the application. By executing the command, the application gives an attacker a privilege or capability that the attacker would not otherwise have.
What an attacker can do
- Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability)
How to prevent it
Architecture and Design
- Libraries that are loaded should be well understood and come from a trusted source. The application can execute code contained in the native libraries, which often contain calls that are susceptible to other security problems, such as buffer overflows or command injection. All native libraries should be validated to determine if the application requires the use of the library. It is very difficult to determine what these native libraries actually do, and the potential for malicious code is high. In addition, the potential for an inadvertent mistake in these native libraries is also high, as many are written in C or C++ and may be susceptible to buffer overflow or race condition problems. To help prevent buffer overflow attacks, validate all input to native calls for content and length. If the native library does not come from a trusted source, review the source code of the library. The library should be built from the reviewed source before using it.
How to find it
- Automated Static Analysis. 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.)
Exploited in the wild: 1 CVE
Vulnerabilities caused by CWE-114 that attackers have used, from CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, newest first.
H2 Security
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Start freeSource: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.