Missing Lock Check

A product does not check to see if a lock is present before performing sensitive operations on a resource.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

A product does not check to see if a lock is present before performing sensitive operations on a resource.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Architecture and Design

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Modify Application DataDoS: InstabilityDoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart

Affected security scopes: Integrity, Availability

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

Architecture and Design · Implementation

Defence to apply across several lifecycle phases

Detail

Implement a reliable lock mechanism.

Verification

How is it detected?

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.)