CWE-278 — Insecure Preserved Inherited Permissions
CWE-278: Insecure Preserved Inherited Permissions
MITRE CWE weakness
| Kind | Weakness |
| Abstraction | Variant |
| Status | Incomplete |
| Likelihood of exploit | — |
Description
A product inherits a set of insecure permissions for an object, e.g. when copying from an archive file, without user awareness or involvement.
Common consequences
- Confidentiality, Integrity: Read Application Data, Modify Application Data
Mitigations
Architecture and Design — Very carefully manage the setting, management, and handling of privileges. Explicitly manage trust zones in the software.
Architecture and Design — Compartmentalize the system to have "safe" areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area. Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.
References
- CWE page: https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/278.html
- CWE list: https://cwe.mitre.org/data/index.html