COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONIncomplete

CWE-278

Insecure Preserved Inherited Permissions

A product inherits a set of insecure permissions for an object, e.g. when copying from an archive file, without user awareness or involvement.

Abstraction

Variant

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

A product inherits a set of insecure permissions for an object, e.g. when copying from an archive file, without user awareness or involvement.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Architecture and Design

Lifecycle phase

Operation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Read Application DataModify Application Data

Affected security scopes: Confidentiality, Integrity

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

Architecture and Design · Operation

Defence to apply across several lifecycle phases

Detail
Very carefully manage the setting, management, and handling of privileges. Explicitly manage trust zones in the software.

Architecture and Design

Separation of Privilege

Detail
Compartmentalize the system to have "safe" areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area. Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.