CWE-285: Improper Authorization

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) 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.

Architecture and Design

Architecture and Design

Strategy: Libraries or Frameworks

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 ].

Architecture and Design

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 the required permissions to access that page.

System Configuration; Installation

REALIZATION: This weakness is caused during implementation of an architectural security tactic.

A developer may introduce authorization weaknesses because of a lack of understanding the underlying technologies. For example, a developer may assume that attackers cannot modify certain inputs such as headers or cookies.

Authorization weaknesses may arise when a single-user application is ported to a multi-user environment.

Class: Not Language-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)

Class: Not Technology-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)

Web Server (Often Prevalent)

Database Server (Often Prevalent)

This function runs an arbitrary SQL query on a given database, returning the result of the query.

While this code is careful to avoid SQL Injection, the function does not confirm the user sending the query is authorized to do so. An attacker may be able to obtain sensitive employee information from the database.

The following program could be part of a bulletin board system that allows users to send private messages to each other. This program intends to authenticate the user before deciding whether a private message should be displayed. Assume that LookupMessageObject() ensures that the $id argument is numeric, constructs a filename based on that id, and reads the message details from that file. Also assume that the program stores all private messages for all users in the same directory.

While the program properly exits if authentication fails, it does not ensure that the message is addressed to the user. As a result, an authenticated attacker could provide any arbitrary identifier and read private messages that were intended for other users.

One way to avoid this problem would be to ensure that the "to" field in the message object matches the username of the authenticated user.

Note: this is a curated list of examples for users to understand the variety of ways in which this weakness can be introduced. It is not a complete list of all CVEs that are related to this CWE entry.