Weakness · High
CWE-268: Privilege Chaining
What it is
Two distinct privileges, roles, capabilities, or rights can be combined in a way that allows an entity to perform unsafe actions that would not be allowed without that combination.
- Severity (our rating)
- High
- Likelihood of exploit
- High
- Introduced during
- Architecture and Design, Implementation, Operation
- Exploited in the wild
- No CVE in CISA's catalog
What an attacker can do
- Gain Privileges or Assume Identity (Access Control)
How to prevent it
Architecture and Design
- Consider following the principle of separation of privilege. Require multiple conditions to be met before permitting access to a system resource.
- 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.
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Start freeSource: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.