Weakness · High

CWE-421: Race Condition During Access to Alternate Channel

What it is

The product opens an alternate channel to communicate with an authorized user, but the channel is accessible to other actors.

MITRE CWE 4.19.1

Severity (our rating)
High
Likelihood of exploit
Not rated by MITRE
Introduced during
Architecture and Design
Exploited in the wild
No CVE in CISA's catalog

In more detail

This creates a race condition that allows an attacker to access the channel before the authorized user does.

What an attacker can do

  • Gain Privileges or Assume Identity (Access Control)
  • Bypass Protection Mechanism (Access Control)

How to prevent it

MITRE lists no specific mitigation for this weakness. Treat it like its parent weaknesses below: validate input, keep the design simple and review the code where it could appear.

CWE-421 on MITRE's CWE site

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Source: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.