Weakness · Medium
CWE-668: Exposure of Resource to Wrong Sphere
What it is
The product exposes a resource to the wrong control sphere, providing unintended actors with inappropriate access to the resource.
- Severity (our rating)
- Medium
- Likelihood of exploit
- Not rated by MITRE
- Introduced during
- Architecture and Design, Implementation, Operation
- Exploited in the wild
- 1 known exploited CVE
In more detail
Resources such as files and directories may be inadvertently exposed through mechanisms such as insecure permissions, or when a program accidentally operates on the wrong object. For example, a program may intend that private files can only be provided to a specific user. This effectively defines a control sphere that is intended to prevent attackers from accessing these private files. If the file permissions are insecure, then parties other than the user will be able to access those files. A separate control sphere might effectively require that the user can only access the private files, but not any other files on the system. If the program does not ensure that the user is only requesting private files, then the user might be able to access other files on the system. In either case, the end result is that a resource has been exposed to the wrong party.
What an attacker can do
- Read Application Data (Confidentiality)
- Modify Application Data (Integrity)
- Varies by Context (Other)
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.
Exploited in the wild: 1 CVE
Vulnerabilities caused by CWE-668 that attackers have used, from CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, newest first.
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.