CWE-1391: Use of Weak Credentials | Glexia
CWE-1391 (Use of Weak Credentials) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK context.
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-1391: Use of Weak Credentials
Use of Weak Credentials 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: An adversary could bypass intended authentication restrictions.
Developer Pattern
CWE-1391 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-1391, 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-1391: Use of Weak Credentials
The product uses weak credentials (such as a default key or hard-coded password) that can be calculated, derived, reused, or guessed by an attacker.
By design, authentication protocols try to ensure that attackers must perform brute force attacks if they do not know the credentials such as a key or password. However, when these credentials are easily predictable or even fixed (as with default or hard-coded passwords and keys), then the attacker can defeat the mechanism without relying on brute force. Credentials may be weak for different reasons, such as: Hard-coded (i.e., static and unchangeable by the administrator) Default (i.e., the same static value across different deployments/installations, but able to be changed by the administrator) Predictable (i.e., generated in a way that produces unique credentials across deployments/installations, but can still be guessed with reasonable efficiency) Previously Compromised (i.e., "leaked" credentials that were published as part of a data breach) Even if a new, unique credential is intended to be generated for each product installation, if the generation is predictable, then that may also simplify guessing attacks.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- In 2022, the OT:ICEFALL study examined products by 10 different Operational Technology (OT) vendors. The researchers reported 56 vulnerabilities and said that the products were "insecure by design" [REF-1283]. If exploited, these vulnerabilities often allowed adversaries to change how the products operated, ranging from denial of service to changing the code that the products executed. Since these products were often used in industries such as power, electrical, water, and others, there could even be safety implications. Multiple OT products used weak credentials.
Remediation
- Architecture and Design Operation: When the user changes or sets a password, check the password against a database of already compromised or breached passwords. These passwords are likely to be used in password guessing attacks.
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.