Book a Security Review

Weakness · High

CWE-653: Improper Isolation or Compartmentalization

What it is

The product does not properly compartmentalize or isolate functionality, processes, or resources that require different privilege levels, rights, or permissions.

1 exploited in the wildMITRE CWE 4.19.1

Severity (our rating)
High
Likelihood of exploit
Not rated by MITRE
Introduced during
Architecture and Design, Implementation
Exploited in the wild
1 known exploited CVE

In more detail

When a weakness occurs in functionality that is accessible by lower-privileged users, then without strong boundaries, an attack might extend the scope of the damage to higher-privileged users.

What an attacker can do

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

How to prevent it

Architecture and Design

  • Break up privileges between different modules, objects, or entities. Minimize the interfaces between modules and require strong access control between them.

How to find it

  • Automated Static Analysis - Binary or Bytecode. According to SOAR, the following detection techniques may be useful: Cost effective for partial coverage: Compare binary / bytecode to application permission manifest
  • Manual Static Analysis - Source Code. According to SOAR, the following detection techniques may be useful: Highly cost effective: Manual Source Code Review (not inspections) Cost effective for partial coverage: Focused Manual Spotcheck - Focused manual analysis of source
  • Architecture or Design Review. According to SOAR, the following detection techniques may be useful: Highly cost effective: Inspection (IEEE 1028 standard) (can apply to requirements, design, source code, etc.) Formal Methods / Correct-By-Construction Cost effective for partial coverage: Attack Modeling

CWE-653 on MITRE's CWE site

Exploited in the wild: 1 CVE

Vulnerabilities caused by CWE-653 that attackers have used, from CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, newest first.

All known exploited vulnerabilities

H2 Security

Found it in your code?

We review where it appears, fix it with your team, and check it was not already used against you.

Talk to our team

T Academy

Stop writing it in the first place

Learn to build software and systems without weaknesses like this one, with practice on real hosts in your browser, every objective checked on the machine.

Start free

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