CWE-565Reliance on Cookies without Validation and Integrity Checking

Description

The product relies on the existence or values of cookies when performing security-critical operations, but it does not properly ensure that the setting is valid for the associated user.

Common consequences

• Confidentiality,Integrity,Availability→Modify Application Data,Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands
  Attackers can easily modify cookies, within the browser or by implementing the client-side code outside of the browser. Reliance on cookies without detailed validation and integrity checking can allow attackers to bypass authentication, con
• Access Control→Gain Privileges or Assume Identity
  It is dangerous to use cookies to set a user's privileges. The cookie can be manipulated to escalate an attacker's privileges to an administrative level.

Potential mitigations

• Architecture and Design
  Avoid using cookie data for a security-related decision.
• Implementation
  Perform thorough input validation (i.e.: server side validation) on the cookie data if you're going to use it for a security related decision.
• Architecture and Design
  Add integrity checks to detect tampering.
• Architecture and Design
  Protect critical cookies from replay attacks, since cross-site scripting or other attacks may allow attackers to steal a strongly-encrypted cookie that also passes integrity checks. This mitigation applies to cookies that should only be valid during a single transaction or session. By enforcing timeouts, you may limit the scope of an attack. As part of your integrity check, use an unpredictable, s

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