Common Weakness Enumeration

The table(s) below shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined as ChildOf, ParentOf, MemberOf and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as PeerOf and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar weaknesses that the user may want to explore.

Relevant to the view "Research Concepts" (CWE-1000)

Nature	Type	ID	Name
ChildOf	Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More general than a Base weakness.	799	Improper Control of Interaction Frequency
ChildOf	Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More general than a Base weakness.	287	Improper Authentication

Relevant to the view "Weaknesses for Simplified Mapping of Published Vulnerabilities" (CWE-1003)

Nature	Type	ID	Name
ChildOf	Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More general than a Base weakness.	287	Improper Authentication

Relevant to the view "Architectural Concepts" (CWE-1008)

Nature	Type	ID	Name
MemberOf	Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.	1010	Authenticate Actors

Relevant to the view "Development Concepts" (CWE-699)

Nature	Type	ID	Name
ChildOf	Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More general than a Base weakness.	287	Improper Authentication

Languages

Example 1

In January 2009, an attacker was able to gain administrator access to a Twitter server because the server did not restrict the number of login attempts. The attacker targeted a member of Twitter's support team and was able to successfully guess the member's password using a brute force attack by guessing a large number of common words. After gaining access as the member of the support staff, the attacker used the administrator panel to gain access to 33 accounts that belonged to celebrities and politicians. Ultimately, fake Twitter messages were sent that appeared to come from the compromised accounts.

Example 2

The following code, extracted from a servlet's doPost() method, performs an authentication lookup every time the servlet is invoked.

However, the software makes no attempt to restrict excessive authentication attempts.

Example 3

This code attempts to limit the number of login attempts by causing the process to sleep before completing the authentication.

However, there is no limit on parallel connections, so this does not increase the amount of time an attacker needs to complete an attack.

Example 4

In the following C/C++ example the validateUser method opens a socket connection, reads a username and password from the socket and attempts to authenticate the username and password.

The validateUser method will continuously check for a valid username and password without any restriction on the number of authentication attempts made. The method should limit the number of authentication attempts made to prevent brute force attacks as in the following example code.