CWE-925 — Improper Verification of Intent by Broadcast Receiver
CWE-925: Improper Verification of Intent by Broadcast Receiver
MITRE CWE weakness
| Kind | Weakness |
| Abstraction | Variant |
| Status | Incomplete |
| Likelihood of exploit | — |
Description
The Android application uses a Broadcast Receiver that receives an Intent but does not properly verify that the Intent came from an authorized source.
Certain types of Intents, identified by action string, can only be broadcast by the operating system itself, not by third-party applications. However, when an application registers to receive these implicit system intents, it is also registered to receive any explicit intents. While a malicious application cannot send an implicit system intent, it can send an explicit intent to the target application, which may assume that any received intent is a valid implicit system intent and not an explicit intent from another application. This may lead to unintended behavior.
Common consequences
- Integrity: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity
Mitigations
Architecture and Design — Before acting on the Intent, check the Intent Action to make sure it matches the expected System action.
References
- CWE page: https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/925.html
- CWE list: https://cwe.mitre.org/data/index.html