CyberSecBulletin

External Control of Assumed-Immutable Web Parameter

CWE-472

The web application does not sufficiently verify inputs that are assumed to be immutable but are actually externally controllable, such as hidden form fields.

For example, custom cookies commonly store session data or persistent data across sessions. This kind of session data is normally involved in security related decisions on the server side, such as user authentication and access control. Thus, the cookies might contain sensitive data such as user credentials and privileges. This is a dangerous practice, as it can often lead to improper reliance on the value of the client-provided cookie by the server side application.

We track 87 vulnerabilities of this type. 99% are rated high or critical, and the average CVSS score is 8.4. 1 has been exploited in real attacks.

How this weakness is prevented

  • Implementation: Inputs should be decoded and canonicalized to the application's current internal representation before being validated (CWE-180). Make sure that the application does not decode the same input twice (CWE-174). Such errors could be used to bypass allowlist validation schemes by introducing dangerous inputs after they have been checked.

Latest External Control of Assumed-Immutable Web Parameter vulnerabilities