CWE-767: Access to Critical Private Variable via Public… | Glexia
CWE-767 (Access to Critical Private Variable via Public Method) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK…
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-767: Access to Critical Private Variable via Public Method
Access to Critical Private Variable via Public Method represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Integrity,Other: Modify Application Data,Other
Developer Pattern
CWE-767 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-767, 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-767: Access to Critical Private Variable via Public Method
The product defines a public method that reads or modifies a private variable.
If an attacker modifies the variable to contain unexpected values, this could violate assumptions from other parts of the code. Additionally, if an attacker can read the private variable, it may expose sensitive information or make it easier to launch further attacks.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- The following example declares a critical variable to be private, and then allows the variable to be modified by public methods.
- The following example could be used to implement a user forum where a single user (UID) can switch between multiple profiles (PID). The programmer implemented setPID with the intention of modifying the PID variable, but due to a typo. accidentally specified the critical variable UID instead. If the program allows profile IDs to be between 1 and 10, but a UID of 1 means the user is treated as an admin, then a user could gain administrative privileges as a result of this typo.
Remediation
- Implementation: Use class accessor and mutator methods appropriately. Perform validation when accepting data from a public method that is intended to modify a critical private variable. Also be sure that appropriate access controls are being applied when a public method interfaces with critical data.
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.