Direct Request ('Forced Browsing')
The web application does not adequately enforce appropriate authorization on all restricted URLs, scripts, or files.
Description
Web applications susceptible to direct request attacks often make the false assumption that such resources can only be reached through a given navigation path and so only apply authorization at certain points in the path.
Demonstrations
The following examples help to illustrate the nature of this weakness and describe methods or techniques which can be used to mitigate the risk.
Note that the examples here are by no means exhaustive and any given weakness may have many subtle varieties, each of which may require different detection methods or runtime controls.
Example One
If forced browsing is possible, an attacker may be able to directly access a sensitive page by entering a URL similar to the following.
http://somesite.com/someapplication/admin.jspSee Also
Weaknesses in this category are related to access control.
Weaknesses in this category are related to the A01 category "Broken Access Control" in the OWASP Top Ten 2021.
Weaknesses in this category are related to authorization components of a system. Frequently these deal with the ability to enforce that agents have the required permis...
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