Weakness (CWE)
CWE-306: Missing Authentication for Critical Functionality
The product does not perform any authentication for functionality that requires a provable user identity or consumes a significant amount of resources.
How to prevent it (5 mitigations)
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Architecture and Design
Divide the software into anonymous, normal, privileged, and administrative areas. Identify which of these areas require a proven user identity, and use a centralized authentication capability.
Identify all potential communication channels, or other means of interaction with the software, to ensure that all channels are appropriately protected, including those channels that are assumed to be accessible only by authorized parties. Developers sometimes perform authentication at the primary channel, but open up a secondary channel that is assumed to be private. For example, a login mechanism may be listening on one network port, but after successful authentication, it may open up a second port where it waits for the connection, but avoids authentication because it assumes that only the authenticated party will connect to the port.
In general, if the software or protocol allows a single session or user state to persist across multiple connections or channels, authentication and appropriate credential management need to be used throughout.
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Architecture and Design
For any security checks that are performed on the client side, ensure that these checks are duplicated on the server side, in order to avoid CWE-602. Attackers can bypass the client-side checks by modifying values after the checks have been performed, or by changing the client to remove the client-side checks entirely. Then, these modified values would be submitted to the server.
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Architecture and Design
Where possible, avoid implementing custom, "grow-your-own" authentication routines and consider using authentication capabilities as provided by the surrounding framework, operating system, or environment. These capabilities may avoid common weaknesses that are unique to authentication; support automatic auditing and tracking; and make it easier to provide a clear separation between authentication tasks and authorization tasks.
In environments such as the World Wide Web, the line between authentication and authorization is sometimes blurred. If custom authentication routines are required instead of those provided by the server, then these routines must be applied to every single page, since these pages could be requested directly.
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Architecture and Design
Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
For example, consider using libraries with authentication capabilities such as OpenSSL or the ESAPI Authenticator [REF-45].
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Implementation, System Configuration, Operation
When storing data in the cloud (e.g., S3 buckets, Azure blobs, Google Cloud Storage, etc.), use the provider's controls to require strong authentication for users who should be allowed to access the data [REF-1297] [REF-1298] [REF-1302].
Source: MITRE CWE-306
11 results · Clear filters · Feed
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High 8.8CVE-2026-67277 Exploited
Kernel memory disclosure and denial of service in MikroTik RouterOS btest service
RouterOS accepts a "related" btest connection before the corresponding primary session has completed authentication. An unauthenticated client can use this state to start an IPv4 UDP test. With "random-data=false", the sender transmits an uninitialized tail f…
KEV Sep 10, 2026 -
High 8.8
LiteLLM: MCP Authentication Bypass via OAuth2 Passthrough Fallback
LiteLLM is a proxy server (AI Gateway) to call LLM APIs in OpenAI (or native) format. Prior to 1.84.0, LiteLLM's MCP Streamable HTTP endpoint allowed an unauthenticated attacker to use a fabricated Authorization header to trigger an OAuth2 passthrough fallbac…
KEV Sep 2, 2026 -
High 7.8CVE-2025-48572 Exploited
In multiple locations, there is a possible way to launch activities from the background due to a permissions bypass. Th…
KEV Dec 2, 2025 -
High 8.7
Arbitrary Command Injection in Smartbedded MeteoBridge
The Meteobridge web interface let meteobridge administrator manage their weather station data collection and administer their meteobridge system through a web application written in CGI shell scripts and C. This web interface exposes an endpoint that is vulne…
KEV Oct 2, 2025 -
High 7.5
Vulnerability in Veeam Backup & Replication component allows encrypted credentials stored in the configuration database…
KEV Aug 22, 2023 -
High 7.5
Vulnerability in the Oracle WebLogic Server product of Oracle Fusion Middleware (component: Core). Supported versions t…
KEV May 1, 2023 -
High 8.1
Windows LSA Spoofing Vulnerability
Windows LSA Spoofing Vulnerability
KEV Jul 1, 2022 -
High 8.5
XStream is vulnerable to a Remote Command Execution attack
XStream is a simple library to serialize objects to XML and back again. In affected versions this vulnerability may allow a remote attacker has sufficient rights to execute commands of the host only by manipulating the processed input stream. No user is affec…
KEV Mar 10, 2023 -
High 8.8
TP-Link TL-WA855RE V5 20200415-rel37464 devices allow an unauthenticated attacker (on the same network) to submit a TDD…
KEV Sep 2, 2025 -
High 8.8
ThinkPHP before 3.2.4, as used in Open Source BMS v1.1.1 and other products, allows Remote Command Execution via public…
KEV Nov 3, 2021 -
High 7.5
Vulnerability in the Oracle WebLogic Server component of Oracle Fusion Middleware (subcomponent: WLS Security). Support…
KEV Feb 10, 2022