COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONIncomplete

CWE-360

Trust of System Event Data

Security based on event locations are insecure and can be spoofed.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

High

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

Security based on event locations are insecure and can be spoofed.

Extended description

Events are a messaging system which may provide control data to programs listening for events. Events often do not have any type of authentication framework to allow them to be verified from a trusted source. Any application, in Windows, on a given desktop can send a message to any window on the same desktop. There is no authentication framework for these messages. Therefore, any message can be used to manipulate any process on the desktop if the process does not check the validity and safeness of those messages.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Architecture and Design

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Gain Privileges or Assume IdentityExecute Unauthorized Code or Commands

Affected security scopes: Integrity, Confidentiality, Availability, Access Control

If one trusts the system-event information and executes commands based on it, one could potentially take actions based on a spoofed identity.

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

Architecture and Design

Architecture and design approach

Detail
Never trust or rely any of the information in an Event for security.