CWE-1280: Access Control Check Implemented After Asset is… | Glexia
CWE-1280 (Access Control Check Implemented After Asset is Accessed) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE…
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-1280: Access Control Check Implemented After Asset is Accessed
Access Control Check Implemented After Asset is Accessed represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Access Control Confidentiality Integrity: Modify Memory Read Memory Modify Application Data Read Application Data Gain Privileges or Assume Identity Bypass Protection Mechanism
Developer Pattern
CWE-1280 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-1280, 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-1280: Access Control Check Implemented After Asset is Accessed
A product's hardware-based access control check occurs after the asset has been accessed.
The product implements a hardware-based access control check. The asset should be accessible only after the check is successful. If, however, this operation is not atomic and the asset is accessed before the check is complete, the security of the system may be compromised.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- Assume that the module foo_bar implements a protected register. The register content is the asset. Only transactions made by user id (indicated by signal usr_id) 0x4 are allowed to modify the register contents. The signal grant_access is used to provide access. This code uses Verilog blocking assignments for data_out and grant_access. Therefore, these assignments happen sequentially (i.e., data_out is updated to new value first, and grant_access is updated the next cycle) and not in parallel. Therefore, the asset data_out is allowed to be modified even before the access control check is complete and grant_access signal is set. Since grant_access does not have a reset value, it will be meta-stable and will randomly go to either 0 or 1. Flipping the order of the assignment of data_out and grant_access should solve the problem. The correct snippet of code is shown below.
Remediation
- Implementation: Implement the access control check first. Access should only be given to asset if agent is authorized.
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.