The product performs an authorization check when an actor attempts to access a resource or perform an action, but it does not correctly perform the check.
Divide the product into anonymous, normal, privileged, and administrative areas. Reduce the attack surface by carefully mapping roles with data and functionality. Use role-based access control (RBAC) [REF-229] to enforce the roles at the appropriate boundaries.
Note that this approach may not protect against horizontal authorization, i.e., it will not protect a user from attacking others with the same role.
Ensure that access control checks are performed related to the business logic. These checks may be different than the access control checks that are applied to more generic resources such as files, connections, processes, memory, and database records. For example, a database may restrict access for medical records to a specific database user, but each record might only be intended to be accessible to the patient and the patient's doctor [REF-7].
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 authorization frameworks such as the JAAS Authorization Framework [REF-233] and the OWASP ESAPI Access Control feature [REF-45].
For web applications, make sure that the access control mechanism is enforced correctly at the server side on every page. Users should not be able to access any unauthorized functionality or information by simply requesting direct access to that page.
One way to do this is to ensure that all pages containing sensitive information are not cached, and that all such pages restrict access to requests that are accompanied by an active and authenticated session token associated with a user who has th...
Use the access control capabilities of your operating system and server environment and define your access control lists accordingly. Use a "default deny" policy when defining these ACLs.
An attacker could bypass intended access restrictions to read sensitive data, either by reading the data directly from a data store that is not correctly restricted, or by accessing insufficiently-protected, privileged functionality to read the data.
An attacker could bypass intended access restrictions to modify sensitive data, either by writing the data directly to a data store that is not correctly restricted, or by accessing insufficiently-protected, privileged functionality to write the data.
An attacker could bypass intended access restrictions to gain privileges by modifying or reading critical data directly, or by accessing privileged functionality.
An attacker could use elevated privileges to execute unauthorized commands or code.
An attacker could gain unauthorized access to resources on the system and excessively consume those resources, leading to a denial of service.
Automated static analysis is useful for detecting commonly-used idioms for authorization. A tool may be able to analyze related configuration files, such as .htaccess in Apache web servers, or detect the usage of commonly-used authorization libraries.
Generally, automated static analysis tools have difficulty detecting custom authorization schemes. Even if they can be customized to recognize these schemes, they might not be able to tell whether the scheme correctly performs the authorization in...
Automated dynamic analysis may not be able to find interfaces that are protected by authorization checks, even if those checks contain weaknesses.
This weakness can be detected using tools and techniques that require manual (human) analysis, such as penetration testing, threat modeling, and interactive tools that allow the tester to record and modify an active session.
Specifically, manual static analysis is useful for evaluating the correctness of custom authorization mechanisms.
According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful:
According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful:
According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful:
According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful:
According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful:
According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful:
CVE-2025-24839collaboration platform allows attacker to access an AI bot by using a plugin to set a critical property
CVE-2025-32796LLM application development platform allows non-admin users to enable or disable apps using certain API endpoints
CVE-2021-39155Chain: A microservice integration and management platform compares the hostname in the HTTP Host header in a case-sensitive way (CWE-178, CWE-1289), allowing bypass of the authorization policy (CWE-863) using a hostname with mixed case or other variations.
CVE-2019-15900Chain: sscanf() call is used to check if a username and group exists, but the return value of sscanf() call is not checked (CWE-252), causing an uninitialized variable to be checked (CWE-457), returning success to allow authorization bypass for executing a privileged (CWE-863).
CVE-2009-2213Gateway uses default "Allow" configuration for its authorization settings.