Weakness · High
CWE-293: Using Referer Field for Authentication
What it is
The referer field in HTTP requests can be easily modified and, as such, is not a valid means of message integrity checking.
- Severity (our rating)
- High
- Likelihood of exploit
- High
- Introduced during
- Architecture and Design
- 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
- In order to usefully check if a given action is authorized, some means of strong authentication and method protection must be used. Use other means of authorization that cannot be simply spoofed. Possibilities include a username/password or certificate.
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.)
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Start freeSource: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.