Reliance on a Single Factor in a Security Decision
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.
Demonstrations
The following examples help to illustrate the nature of this weakness and describe methods or techniques which can be used to mitigate the risk.
Note that the examples here are by no means exhaustive and any given weakness may have many subtle varieties, each of which may require different detection methods or runtime controls.
Example One
Password-only authentication is perhaps the most well-known example of use of a single factor. Anybody who knows a user's password can impersonate that user.
Example Two
When authenticating, use multiple factors, such as "something you know" (such as a password) and "something you have" (such as a hardware-based one-time password generator, or a biometric device).
See Also
Weaknesses in this category are related to violation of secure design principles.
Weaknesses in this category are related to coding practices that are deemed unsafe and increase the chances that an exploitable vulnerability will be present in the ap...
This category identifies Software Fault Patterns (SFPs) within the Architecture cluster.
This view (slice) covers all the elements in CWE.
CWE entries in this view have maintenance notes. Maintenance notes are an indicator that an entry might change significantly in future versions. This view was created...
This view (slice) lists weaknesses that can be introduced during implementation.
Common Weakness Enumeration content on this website is copyright of The MITRE Corporation unless otherwise specified. Use of the Common Weakness Enumeration and the associated references on this website are subject to the Terms of Use as specified by The MITRE Corporation.