CWE-360: Trust of System Event Data
Description
Security based on event locations are insecure and can be spoofed.
Events are a messaging system which may provide control data to programs listening for events. Events often do not have any type of authentication framework to allow them to be verified from a trusted source. Any application, in Windows, on a given desktop can send a message to any window on the same desktop. There is no authentication framework for these messages. Therefore, any message can be used to manipulate any process on the desktop if the process does not check the validity and safeness of those messages.
- Abstraction
- BaseA weakness specific enough to point to detection and prevention methods.
- Likelihood of exploit
- High
- Status
- Incomplete
Common consequences
- IntegrityConfidentialityAvailabilityAccess Control
Gain Privileges or Assume Identity; Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands
If one trusts the system-event information and executes commands based on it, one could potentially take actions based on a spoofed identity.
Potential mitigations
- Architecture and Design
Never trust or rely any of the information in an Event for security.
Related weaknesses
Parent weaknesses
Child weaknesses
CAPEC attack patterns that exploit it
CWE 4.20 links no CAPEC attack pattern to this weakness.