Lack of Administrator Control over Security

The product uses security features in a way that prevents the product's administrator from tailoring security settings to reflect the environment in which the product is being used. This introduces resultant weaknesses or prevents it from operating at a level of security that is desired by the administrator.


Description

If the product's administrator does not have the ability to manage security-related decisions at all times, then protecting the product from outside threats - including the product's developer - can become impossible. For example, a hard-coded account name and password cannot be changed by the administrator, thus exposing that product to attacks that the administrator can not prevent.

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

The following code is an example of an internal hard-coded password in the back-end:

int VerifyAdmin(char *password) {

  if (strcmp(password, "Mew!")) {

    printf("Incorrect Password!\n");
    return(0)

  }
  printf("Entering Diagnostic Mode...\n");
  return(1);

}
int VerifyAdmin(String password) {
  if (!password.equals("Mew!")) {
    return(0)
  }
  //Diagnostic Mode
  return(1);
}

Every instance of this program can be placed into diagnostic mode with the same password. Even worse is the fact that if this program is distributed as a binary-only distribution, it is very difficult to change that password or disable this "functionality."

See Also

Comprehensive Categorization: Violation of Secure Design Principles

Weaknesses in this category are related to violation of secure design principles.

Authorize Actors

Weaknesses in this category are related to the design and architecture of a system's authorization components. Frequently these deal with enforcing that agents have th...

SFP Secondary Cluster: Architecture

This category identifies Software Fault Patterns (SFPs) within the Architecture cluster.

Comprehensive CWE Dictionary

This view (slice) covers all the elements in CWE.

Weaknesses Introduced During Implementation

This view (slice) lists weaknesses that can be introduced during implementation.

Weaknesses Introduced During Design

This view (slice) lists weaknesses that can be introduced during design.


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