CWE-640: Weak Password Recovery Mechanism for Forgotten PasswordWeakness ID: 640 Vulnerability Mapping:
ALLOWEDThis CWE ID could be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities in limited situations requiring careful review (with careful review of mapping notes) Abstraction: BaseBase - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource. |
Description The product contains a mechanism for users to recover or change their passwords without knowing the original password, but the mechanism is weak. Extended Description It is common for an application to have a mechanism that provides a means for a user to gain access to their account in the event they forget their password. Very often the password recovery mechanism is weak, which has the effect of making it more likely that it would be possible for a person other than the legitimate system user to gain access to that user's account. Weak password recovery schemes completely undermine a strong password authentication scheme. This weakness may be that the security question is too easy to guess or find an answer to (e.g. because the question is too common, or the answers can be found using social media). Or there might be an implementation weakness in the password recovery mechanism code that may for instance trick the system into e-mailing the new password to an e-mail account other than that of the user. There might be no throttling done on the rate of password resets so that a legitimate user can be denied service by an attacker if an attacker tries to recover their password in a rapid succession. The system may send the original password to the user rather than generating a new temporary password. In summary, password recovery functionality, if not carefully designed and implemented can often become the system's weakest link that can be misused in a way that would allow an attacker to gain unauthorized access to the system. Common Consequences This table specifies different individual consequences associated with the weakness. The Scope identifies the application security area that is violated, while the Impact describes the negative technical impact that arises if an adversary succeeds in exploiting this weakness. The Likelihood provides information about how likely the specific consequence is expected to be seen relative to the other consequences in the list. For example, there may be high likelihood that a weakness will be exploited to achieve a certain impact, but a low likelihood that it will be exploited to achieve a different impact.Scope | Impact | Likelihood |
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Access Control
| Technical Impact: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity An attacker could gain unauthorized access to the system by retrieving legitimate user's authentication credentials. | | Availability
| Technical Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (Other) An attacker could deny service to legitimate system users by launching a brute force attack on the password recovery mechanism using user ids of legitimate users. | | Integrity Other
| The system's security functionality is turned against the system by the attacker. | |
Potential Mitigations
Phase: Architecture and Design Make sure that all input supplied by the user to the password recovery mechanism is thoroughly filtered and validated. |
Phase: Architecture and Design Do not use standard weak security questions and use several security questions. |
Phase: Architecture and Design Make sure that there is throttling on the number of incorrect answers to a security question. Disable the password recovery functionality after a certain (small) number of incorrect guesses. |
Phase: Architecture and Design Require that the user properly answers the security question prior to resetting their password and sending the new password to the e-mail address of record. |
Phase: Architecture and Design Never allow the user to control what e-mail address the new password will be sent to in the password recovery mechanism. |
Phase: Architecture and Design Assign a new temporary password rather than revealing the original password. |
Relationships This table 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 |
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ChildOf | Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource. | 1390 | Weak Authentication |
This table 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.This table 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 "Weaknesses for Simplified Mapping of Published Vulnerabilities" (CWE-1003) Nature | Type | ID | Name |
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ChildOf | Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource. | 287 | Improper Authentication |
This table 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 "Architectural Concepts" (CWE-1008) Nature | Type | ID | Name |
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MemberOf | Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic. | 1010 | Authenticate Actors |
Modes Of Introduction The different Modes of Introduction provide information about how and when this weakness may be introduced. The Phase identifies a point in the life cycle at which introduction may occur, while the Note provides a typical scenario related to introduction during the given phase.Phase | Note |
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Architecture and Design | COMMISSION: This weakness refers to an incorrect design related to an architectural security tactic. | Implementation | |
Likelihood Of Exploit Demonstrative Examples Example 1 A famous example of this type of weakness being exploited is the eBay attack. eBay always displays the user id of the highest bidder. In the final minutes of the auction, one of the bidders could try to log in as the highest bidder three times. After three incorrect log in attempts, eBay password throttling would kick in and lock out the highest bidder's account for some time. An attacker could then make their own bid and their victim would not have a chance to place the counter bid because they would be locked out. Thus an attacker could win the auction. Memberships This MemberOf Relationships table shows additional CWE Categories and Views that reference this weakness as a member. This information is often useful in understanding where a weakness fits within the context of external information sources. Vulnerability Mapping Notes Usage: ALLOWED-WITH-REVIEW (this CWE ID could be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities in limited situations requiring careful review) | Reason: Frequent Misuse | Rationale: This entry appears to be frequently misused for any weakness related to password changes, even though the name focuses on "Password Recovery" for a "forgotten" password. | Comments: CWE-640 should only be used when there is a "password recovery" mechanism for forgotten passwords. Consider password-related entries under CWE-1390: Weak Authentication. |
Notes Maintenance This entry might be reclassified as a category or "loose composite," since it lists multiple specific errors that can make the mechanism weak. However, under view 1000, it could be a weakness under protection mechanism failure, although it is different from most PMF issues since it is related to a feature that is designed to bypass a protection mechanism (specifically, the lack of knowledge of a password). Maintenance This entry probably needs to be split; see extended description. Taxonomy Mappings Mapped Taxonomy Name | Node ID | Fit | Mapped Node Name |
WASC | 49 | | Insufficient Password Recovery |
References
[REF-44] Michael Howard, David LeBlanc
and John Viega. "24 Deadly Sins of Software Security". "Sin 19: Use of Weak Password-Based Systems." Page 279. McGraw-Hill. 2010.
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Content History Submissions |
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Submission Date | Submitter | Organization |
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2008-01-30 (CWE Draft 8, 2008-01-30) | Evgeny Lebanidze | Cigital | | Modifications |
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Modification Date | Modifier | Organization |
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2008-09-08 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Common_Consequences, Description, Maintenance_Notes, Name, Relationships | 2009-03-10 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Relationships | 2009-05-27 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Related_Attack_Patterns | 2010-02-16 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Taxonomy_Mappings | 2010-12-13 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Common_Consequences | 2011-03-29 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Relationships | 2011-06-01 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Common_Consequences | 2012-05-11 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated References, Relationships | 2012-10-30 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Potential_Mitigations | 2014-06-23 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Relationships | 2014-07-30 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Relationships | 2015-12-07 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Relationships | 2017-11-08 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Applicable_Platforms, Demonstrative_Examples, Description, Enabling_Factors_for_Exploitation, Modes_of_Introduction, Observed_Examples, Relationships | 2018-03-27 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Relationships | 2019-06-20 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Relationships | 2021-10-28 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Relationships | 2022-10-13 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Relationships | 2023-01-31 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Description | 2023-04-27 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Relationships | 2023-06-29 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Mapping_Notes | Previous Entry Names |
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Change Date | Previous Entry Name |
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2008-09-09 | Weak Password Recovery Mechanism | |
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