Weakness · Medium
CWE-782: Exposed IOCTL with Insufficient Access Control
What it is
The product implements an IOCTL with functionality that should be restricted, but it does not properly enforce access control for the IOCTL.
- Severity (our rating)
- Medium
- 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 an IOCTL contains privileged functionality and is exposed unnecessarily, attackers may be able to access this functionality by invoking the IOCTL. Even if the functionality is benign, if the programmer has assumed that the IOCTL would only be accessed by a trusted process, there may be little or no validation of the incoming data, exposing weaknesses that would never be reachable if the attacker cannot call the IOCTL directly. The implementations of IOCTLs will differ between operating system types and versions, so the methods of attack and prevention may vary widely.
What an attacker can do
- Varies by Context (Integrity, Availability, Confidentiality)
How to prevent it
Architecture and Design
- In Windows environments, use proper access control for the associated device or device namespace. See References.
Exploited in the wild: 1 CVE
Vulnerabilities caused by CWE-782 that attackers have used, from CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, newest first.
H2 Security
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