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Failure to follow the principle of least privilege may allow exploits to execute with elevated privileges.
Recommendation | Severity | Likelihood | Remediation Cost | Priority | Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
POS02-C | High | Likely | High | P9 | L2 |
Automated Detection
Tool | Version | Checker | Description | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Klocwork |
| SV.BRM.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SV.USAGERULES.PERMISSIONS |
Related Vulnerabilities
CVE-2009-2031 results from a violation of this recommendation. OpenSolaris, in smbfs snv_84 through snv_110, sets permissions based on mount-point options and not actual user information (obtained from the getuid() and getgid() functions). An attacker can exploit this to achieve higher permissions. Also, in a certain initialization mode, the code grants read, write, and execute permissions to users other than the owner, which can be exploited to make files world readable [xorl 2009].
Search for vulnerabilities resulting from the violation of this rule on the CERT website.
Related Guidelines
| ISO/IEC TR 24772 | Adherence to Least Privilege [XYN] |
| MITRE CWE | CWE-250, Execution with unnecessary privileges CWE-272, Least privilege violation |
Bibliography
| [DHS 2006] | Least Privilege |
| [Saltzer 1974] |
| [Saltzer 1975] |
| [Wheeler 2003] | Section 7.4, "Minimize Privileges" |
| [xorl 2009] | "OpenSolaris CIFS/SMB Invalid File Flags" |
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