COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONIncomplete

CWE-923

Improper Restriction of Communication Channel to Intended Endpoints

The product establishes a communication channel to (or from) an endpoint for privileged or protected operations, but it does not properly ensure that it is communicating with the correct endpoint.

Abstraction

Class

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product establishes a communication channel to (or from) an endpoint for privileged or protected operations, but it does not properly ensure that it is communicating with the correct endpoint.

Extended description

Attackers might be able to spoof the intended endpoint from a different system or process, thus gaining the same level of access as the intended endpoint. While this issue frequently involves authentication between network-based clients and servers, other types of communication channels and endpoints can have this weakness.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Architecture and Design

REALIZATION: This weakness is caused during implementation of an architectural security tactic.

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Gain Privileges or Assume Identity

Affected security scopes: Integrity, Confidentiality

If an attacker can spoof the endpoint, the attacker gains all the privileges that were intended for the original endpoint.

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

  • Follow secure coding guidelines for input handling and boundary checking.
  • Enforce strict security reviews and automated static analysis (SAST) checks.

Verification

How is it detected?

Automated Static Analysis

High
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.)