CWE-296 — Improper Following of a Certificate's Chain of Trust
CWE-296: Improper Following of a Certificate's Chain of Trust
MITRE CWE weakness
| Kind | Weakness |
| Abstraction | Base |
| Status | Draft |
| Likelihood of exploit | Low |
Description
The product does not follow, or incorrectly follows, the chain of trust for a certificate back to a trusted root certificate.
There are several ways in which the chain of trust might be broken, including but not limited to: Any certificate in the chain is self-signed, unless it is the root. Not every intermediate certificate is checked, starting from the original certificate all the way up to the root certificate. An intermediate, CA-signed certificate does not have the expected Basic Constraints or other important extensions. The root certificate has been compromised or authorized to the wrong party.
Common consequences
- Non-Repudiation: Hide Activities
- Integrity, Confidentiality, Availability, Access Control: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity, Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands
Mitigations
Architecture and Design — Ensure that proper certificate checking is included in the system design.
Implementation — Understand, and properly implement all checks necessary to ensure the integrity of certificate trust integrity.
Implementation — If certificate pinning is being used, ensure that all relevant properties of the certificate are fully validated before the certificate is pinned, including the full chain of trust.
References
- CWE page: https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/296.html
- CWE list: https://cwe.mitre.org/data/index.html