Incorrect Use of Privileged APIs
The product does not conform to the API requirements for a function call that requires extra privileges. This could allow attackers to gain privileges by causing the function to be called incorrectly.
Description
When a product contains certain functions that perform operations requiring an elevated level of privilege, the caller of a privileged API must be careful to:
ensure that assumptions made by the APIs are valid, such as validity of arguments
account for known weaknesses in the design/implementation of the API
call the API from a safe context
If the caller of the API does not follow these requirements, then it may allow a malicious user or process to elevate their privilege, hijack the process, or steal sensitive data.
For instance, it is important to know if privileged APIs do not shed their privileges before returning to the caller or if the privileged function might make certain assumptions about the data, context or state information passed to it by the caller. It is important to always know when and how privileged APIs can be called in order to ensure that their elevated level of privilege cannot be exploited.
See Also
Weaknesses in this category are related to access control.
Weaknesses in this category are related to the "Frail Security in Protocols" category from the SEI ETF "Categories of Security Vulnerabilities in ICS" as published in ...
This category identifies Software Fault Patterns (SFPs) within the Design cluster.
This view (slice) covers all the elements in CWE.
This view contains a selection of weaknesses that represent the variety of weaknesses that are captured in CWE, at a level of abstraction that is likely to be useful t...
This view (slice) lists weaknesses that can be introduced during implementation.
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