CWE-832: Unlock of a Resource that is not Locked | Glexia
CWE-832 (Unlock of a Resource that is not Locked) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK context.
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-832: Unlock of a Resource that is not Locked
Unlock of a Resource that is not Locked represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Integrity,Confidentiality,Availability,Other: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart,Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands,Modify Memory,Other: Depending on the locking being used, an unlock operation might not have any adverse effects. When effects exist, the most common consequence will be a corruption of the state of the product, possibly leading to a crash or exit; depending on the implementation of the unlocking, memory corruption or code execution could occur.
Developer Pattern
CWE-832 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-832, 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-832: Unlock of a Resource that is not Locked
The product attempts to unlock a resource that is not locked.
Depending on the locking functionality, an unlock of a non-locked resource might cause memory corruption or other modification to the resource (or its associated metadata that is used for tracking locks).
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
- Automated Static Analysis: Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
Related CWEs
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.