CWE-836: Use of Password Hash Instead of Password for… | Glexia
CWE-836 (Use of Password Hash Instead of Password for Authentication) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE…
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-836: Use of Password Hash Instead of Password for Authentication
Use of Password Hash Instead of Password for Authentication represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Access Control: Bypass Protection Mechanism Gain Privileges or Assume Identity: An attacker could bypass the authentication routine without knowing the original password.
Developer Pattern
CWE-836 is the kind of defect developers can usually prevent with explicit validation, safer framework defaults, and tests that exercise hostile input or unsafe state transitions.
Automation confidence
high confidence from CWE-836, 4.20.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Official CWE Definition
CWE-836: Use of Password Hash Instead of Password for Authentication
The product records password hashes in a data store, receives a hash of a password from a client, and compares the supplied hash to the hash obtained from the data store.
Some authentication mechanisms rely on the client to generate the hash for a password, possibly to reduce load on the server or avoid sending the password across the network. However, when the client is used to generate the hash, an attacker can bypass the authentication by obtaining a copy of the hash, e.g. by using SQL injection to compromise a database of authentication credentials, or by exploiting an information exposure. The attacker could then use a modified client to replay the stolen hash without having knowledge of the original password. As a result, the server-side comparison against a client-side hash does not provide any more security than the use of passwords without hashing.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- Missing validation
- Unsafe defaults
- Insufficient authorization or memory-safety invariant
Remediation
- Use safe APIs
- Centralize the control
- Add regression tests
- Review logs and telemetry for attempted abuse
Detection
- Code review
- SAST
- DAST
- Focused regression tests
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.