Weakness · Medium
CWE-298: Improper Validation of Certificate Expiration
What it is
A certificate expiration is not validated or is incorrectly validated, so trust may be assigned to certificates that have been abandoned due to age.
- Severity (our rating)
- Medium
- Likelihood of exploit
- Low
- Introduced during
- Implementation
- Exploited in the wild
- No CVE in CISA's catalog
In more detail
When the expiration of a certificate is not taken into account, no trust has necessarily been conveyed through it. Therefore, the validity of the certificate cannot be verified and all benefit of the certificate is lost.
What an attacker can do
- Other (Integrity, Other, Authentication)
How to prevent it
Architecture and Design
- Check for expired certificates and provide the user with adequate information about the nature of the problem and how to proceed.
Implementation
- If certificate pinning is being used, ensure that all relevant properties of the certificate are fully validated before the certificate is pinned, including the expiration.
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.