Weakness · High
CWE-267: Privilege Defined With Unsafe Actions
What it is
A particular privilege, role, capability, or right can be used to perform unsafe actions that were not intended, even when it is assigned to the correct entity.
- Severity (our rating)
- High
- Likelihood of exploit
- Not rated by MITRE
- Introduced during
- Architecture and Design, Implementation, Operation
- Exploited in the wild
- 1 known exploited CVE
What an attacker can do
- Gain Privileges or Assume Identity (Access Control)
How to prevent it
Architecture and Design
- Very carefully manage the setting, management, and handling of privileges. Explicitly manage trust zones in the software.
- Run your code using the lowest privileges that are required to accomplish the necessary tasks. If possible, create isolated accounts with limited privileges that are only used for a single task. That way, a successful attack will not immediately give the attacker access to the rest of the software or its environment. For example, database applications rarely need to run as the database administrator, especially in day-to-day operations.
Exploited in the wild: 1 CVE
Vulnerabilities caused by CWE-267 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.