CWE-654: Reliance on a Single Factor in a Security Decision

Description

A protection mechanism relies exclusively, or to a large extent, on the evaluation of a single condition or the integrity of a single object or entity in order to make a decision about granting access to restricted resources or functionality.

Abstraction: BaseA weakness specific enough to point to detection and prevention methods.
Likelihood of exploit: Not rated by MITRE
Status: Draft

Common consequences

Access Control
Gain Privileges or Assume Identity
If the single factor is compromised (e.g. by theft or spoofing), then the integrity of the entire security mechanism can be violated with respect to the user that is identified by that factor.
Non-Repudiation
Hide Activities
It can become difficult or impossible for the product to be able to distinguish between legitimate activities by the entity who provided the factor, versus illegitimate activities by an attacker.

Potential mitigations

Architecture and Design
Use multiple simultaneous checks before granting access to critical operations or granting critical privileges. A weaker but helpful mitigation is to use several successive checks (multiple layers of security).
Architecture and Design
Use redundant access rules on different choke points (e.g., firewalls).

Related weaknesses

Parent weaknesses

Child weaknesses

CAPEC attack patterns that exploit it

Common consequences

Access Control

Gain Privileges or Assume Identity

If the single factor is compromised (e.g. by theft or spoofing), then the integrity of the entire security mechanism can be violated with respect to the user that is identified by that factor.

Non-Repudiation

Hide Activities

It can become difficult or impossible for the product to be able to distinguish between legitimate activities by the entity who provided the factor, versus illegitimate activities by an attacker.

Potential mitigations

Architecture and Design

Use multiple simultaneous checks before granting access to critical operations or granting critical privileges. A weaker but helpful mitigation is to use several successive checks (multiple layers of security).

Architecture and Design

Use redundant access rules on different choke points (e.g., firewalls).