Context Switching Race Condition (4.19.1)

Weakness ID: 368

Vulnerability Mapping: ALLOWED This CWE ID may be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities
Abstraction: Base Base - 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

A product performs a series of non-atomic actions to switch between contexts that cross privilege or other security boundaries, but a race condition allows an attacker to modify or misrepresent the product's behavior during the switch.

+ Extended Description

This is commonly seen in web browser vulnerabilities in which the attacker can perform certain actions while the browser is transitioning from a trusted to an untrusted domain, or vice versa, and the browser performs the actions on one domain using the trust level and resources of the other domain.

+ Common Consequences

Section HelpThis 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.

Impact Details

Modify Application Data; Read Application Data

Scope: Integrity, Confidentiality

+ Relationships

Section Help 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" (View-1000)

+ Relevant to the view "Software Development" (View-699)

Nature Type ID Name
MemberOf Category Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic. 557 Concurrency Issues

+ Modes Of Introduction

Section HelpThe 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
Architecture and Design
Implementation

+ Applicable Platforms

Section HelpThis listing shows possible areas for which the given weakness could appear. These may be for specific named Languages, Operating Systems, Architectures, Paradigms, Technologies, or a class of such platforms. The platform is listed along with how frequently the given weakness appears for that instance.

Languages

Class: Not Language-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)

Technologies

Class: Not Technology-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)

+ Selected Observed Examples

Note: this is a curated list of examples for users to understand the variety of ways in which this weakness can be introduced. It is not a complete list of all CVEs that are related to this CWE entry.

Reference Description

Chain: race condition (CWE-362) from improper handling of a page transition in web client while an applet is loading (CWE-368) leads to use after free (CWE-416)

Browser updates address bar as soon as user clicks on a link instead of when the page has loaded, allowing spoofing by redirecting to another page using onUnload method. ** this is one example of the role of "hooks" and context switches, and should be captured somehow - also a race condition of sorts **

XSS when web browser executes Javascript events in the context of a new page while it's being loaded, allowing interaction with previous page in different domain.

Web browser fills in address bar of clicked-on link before page has been loaded, and doesn't update afterward.

+ Weakness Ordinalities

Ordinality Description

Primary

(where the weakness exists independent of other weaknesses)

This weakness can be primary to almost anything, depending on the context of the race condition.

Resultant

(where the weakness is typically related to the presence of some other weaknesses)

This weakness can be resultant from insufficient compartmentalization (CWE-653), incorrect locking, improper initialization or shutdown, or a number of other weaknesses.