CWE-386: Symbolic Name not Mapping to Correct Object | Glexia
CWE-386 (Symbolic Name not Mapping to Correct Object) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK context.
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-386: Symbolic Name not Mapping to Correct Object
Symbolic Name not Mapping to Correct Object represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Access Control: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity: The attacker can gain access to otherwise unauthorized resources.
- Integrity Confidentiality Other: Modify Application Data Modify Files or Directories Read Application Data Read Files or Directories Other: Race conditions such as this kind may be employed to gain read or write access to resources not normally readable or writable by the user in question.
- Integrity Other: Modify Application Data Other: The resource in question, or other resources (through the corrupted one) may be changed in undesirable ways by a malicious user.
- Non-Repudiation: Hide Activities: If a file or other resource is written in this method, as opposed to a valid way, logging of the activity may not occur.
- Non-Repudiation Integrity: Modify Files or Directories: In some cases it may be possible to delete files that a malicious user might not otherwise have access to -- such as log files.
Developer Pattern
CWE-386 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-386, 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-386: Symbolic Name not Mapping to Correct Object
A constant symbolic reference to an object is used, even though the reference can resolve to a different object over time.
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
Related CWEs
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.
