CWE Reference
CWE-272: Least Privilege Violation | Glexia
CWE-272 (Least Privilege Violation) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK context.
Release 4.20weaknessIncomplete
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-272: Least Privilege Violation
Least Privilege Violation represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Access Control Confidentiality: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity Read Application Data Read Files or Directories: An attacker may be able to access resources with the elevated privilege that could not be accessed with the attacker's original privileges. This is particularly likely in conjunction with another flaw, such as a buffer overflow.
Developer Pattern
CWE-272 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-272, 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-272: Least Privilege Violation
The elevated privilege level required to perform operations such as chroot() should be dropped immediately after the operation is performed.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- The following example demonstrates the weakness.
- The following code calls chroot() to restrict the application to a subset of the filesystem below APP_HOME in order to prevent an attacker from using the program to gain unauthorized access to files located elsewhere. The code then opens a file specified by the user and processes the contents of the file. Constraining the process inside the application's home directory before opening any files is a valuable security measure. However, the absence of a call to setuid() with some non-zero value means the application is continuing to operate with unnecessary root privileges. Any successful exploit carried out by an attacker against the application can now result in a privilege escalation attack because any malicious operations will be performed with the privileges of the superuser. If the application drops to the privilege level of a non-root user, the potential for damage is substantially reduced.
Remediation
- Architecture and Design Operation: Very carefully manage the setting, management, and handling of privileges. Explicitly manage trust zones in the software.
- Architecture and Design: Follow the principle of least privilege when assigning access rights to entities in a software system.
- Architecture and Design: Compartmentalize the system to have "safe" areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area. Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.
Detection
- Automated Static Analysis - Binary or Bytecode: According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful: Cost effective for partial coverage: Compare binary / bytecode to application permission manifest
- Dynamic Analysis with Automated Results Interpretation: According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful: Cost effective for partial coverage: Host-based Vulnerability Scanners - Examine configuration for flaws, verifying that audit mechanisms work, ensure host configuration meets certain predefined criteria
- Manual Static Analysis - Source Code: According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful: Highly cost effective: Manual Source Code Review (not inspections) Cost effective for partial coverage: Focused Manual Spotcheck - Focused manual analysis of source
- Automated Static Analysis - Source Code: According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful: Cost effective for partial coverage: Source code Weakness Analyzer Context-configured Source Code Weakness Analyzer
- Automated Static Analysis: According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful: Cost effective for partial coverage: Permission Manifest Analysis
- Architecture or Design Review: According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful: Highly cost effective: Inspection (IEEE 1028 standard) (can apply to requirements, design, source code, etc.) Formal Methods / Correct-By-Construction Cost effective for partial coverage: Attack Modeling
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
Related CWEs
No related CWE relationships are published yet.
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.