Variant weakness
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The product does not check the revocation status of a certificate after its initial revocation check, which can cause the product to perform privileged actions even after the certificate is revoked at a later time.
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If the revocation status of a certificate is not checked before each action that requires privileges, the system may be subject to a race condition. If a certificate is revoked after the initial check, all subsequent actions taken with the owner of the revoked certificate will lose all benefits guaranteed by the certificate. In fact, it is almost certain that the use of a revoked certificate indicates malicious activity.
What can happen when CWE-370 is exploited.
Gain Privileges or Assume Identity
Affects: Access Control
Trust may be assigned to an entity who is not who it claims to be.
Modify Application Data
Affects: Integrity
Data from an untrusted (and possibly malicious) source may be integrated.
Read Application Data
Affects: Confidentiality
Data may be disclosed to an entity impersonating a trusted entity, resulting in information disclosure.
Typically introduced during these phases of the software lifecycle.
Practical mitigations for CWE-370, grouped by where in the lifecycle they apply.
Ensure that certificates are checked for revoked status before each use of a protected resource. If the certificate is checked before each access of a protected resource, the delay subject to a possible race condition becomes almost negligible and significantly reduces the risk associated with this issue.
Illustrative examples from MITRE showing how the weakness appears in code.
The following code checks a certificate before performing an action.
Vulnerable example
if (cert = SSL_get_peer_certificate(ssl)) {While the code performs the certificate verification before each action, it does not check the result of the verification after the initial attempt. The certificate may have been revoked in the time between the privileged actions.
CAPEC attack patterns that exploit this weakness.
Common questions about CWE-370.
The product does not check the revocation status of a certificate after its initial revocation check, which can cause the product to perform privileged actions even after the certificate is revoked at a later time.
Ensure that certificates are checked for revoked status before each use of a protected resource. If the certificate is checked before each access of a protected resource, the delay subject to a possible race condition becomes almost negligible and significantly reduces the risk associated with this issue.
Exploiting CWE-370 can lead to: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity, Modify Application Data, Read Application Data.
Weakness data is sourced from the MITRE CWE catalog (v4.20). CVE associations are aggregated and kept current by RadicalNotion.AI.
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