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Weakness (CWE)

CWE-271: Privilege Dropping / Lowering Errors

Class Incomplete

The product does not drop privileges before passing control of a resource to an actor that does not have those privileges.

How to prevent it (3 mitigations)

  1. Architecture and Design

    Compartmentalize the system to have "safe" areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.

    Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

  2. Architecture and Design, Operation

    Very carefully manage the setting, management, and handling of privileges. Explicitly manage trust zones in the software.

  3. Architecture and Design

    Consider following the principle of separation of privilege. Require multiple conditions to be met before permitting access to a system resource.

Source: MITRE CWE-271

All Critical High Medium Low Exploited only Public exploit

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