Base weakness
Incomplete
CWE-272: Least Privilege Violation
The elevated privilege level required to perform operations such as chroot() should be dropped immediately after the operation is performed.
Last updated
27
Recorded CVEs
With this primary weakness
0
KEVs
In the CISA KEV catalog
Not rated
Likelihood of exploit
Per MITRE
Base
Abstraction
MITRE classification
Overview
CWE-272 (Least Privilege Violation) is a base-level software weakness catalogued by MITRE in the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE). It describes a recurring type of mistake that can lead to exploitable security vulnerabilities.
Real-world CVEs
27 recorded CVEs are caused by CWE-272 (Least Privilege Violation). The highest-severity and most recent are shown first. 10 new CWE-272 CVEs have been recorded so far in 2026 (7 in 2025).