Weakness · High
CWE-291: Reliance on IP Address for Authentication
What it is
The product uses an IP address for authentication.
- Severity (our rating)
- High
- Likelihood of exploit
- High
- Introduced during
- Architecture and Design
- Exploited in the wild
- No CVE in CISA's catalog
In more detail
IP addresses can be easily spoofed. Attackers can forge the source IP address of the packets they send, but response packets will return to the forged IP address. To see the response packets, the attacker has to sniff the traffic between the victim machine and the forged IP address. In order to accomplish the required sniffing, attackers typically attempt to locate themselves on the same subnet as the victim machine. Attackers may be able to circumvent this requirement by using source routing, but source routing is disabled across much of the Internet today. In summary, IP address verification can be a useful part of an authentication scheme, but it should not be the single factor required for authentication.
What an attacker can do
- Hide Activities (Access Control, Non-Repudiation)
- Gain Privileges or Assume Identity (Access Control, Non-Repudiation)
How to prevent it
Architecture and Design
- Use other means of identity verification that cannot be simply spoofed. Possibilities include a username/password or certificate.
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.