CWE-1263: Improper Physical Access Control | Glexia
CWE-1263 (Improper Physical Access Control) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK context.
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-1263: Improper Physical Access Control
Improper Physical Access Control represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Confidentiality,Integrity,Access Control: Varies by Context
Developer Pattern
CWE-1263 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-1263, 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-1263: Improper Physical Access Control
The product is designed with access restricted to certain information, but it does not sufficiently protect against an unauthorized actor with physical access to these areas.
Sections of a product intended to have restricted access may be inadvertently or intentionally rendered accessible when the implemented physical protections are insufficient. The specific requirements around how robust the design of the physical protection mechanism needs to be depends on the type of product being protected. Selecting the correct physical protection mechanism and properly enforcing it through implementation and manufacturing are critical to the overall physical security of the product.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- Missing validation
- Unsafe defaults
- Insufficient authorization or memory-safety invariant
Remediation
- Architecture and Design: Specific protection requirements depend strongly on contextual factors including the level of acceptable risk associated with compromise to the product's protection mechanism. Designers could incorporate anti-tampering measures that protect against or detect when the product has been tampered with.
- Testing: The testing phase of the lifecycle should establish a method for determining whether the protection mechanism is sufficient to prevent unauthorized access.
- Manufacturing: Ensure that all protection mechanisms are fully activated at the time of manufacturing and distribution.
Detection
- Code review
- SAST
- DAST
- Focused regression tests
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
Related CWEs
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.