CWE-368: Context Switching Race Condition Weakness ID: 368 Vulnerability Mapping:
ALLOWEDThis CWE ID may be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities
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 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  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 |
|---|
Integrity
Confidentiality
| Technical Impact: Modify Application Data; Read Application Data | |
Relationships 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 | | | Implementation | |
Observed Examples | Reference | Description |
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| 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 is a quality issue that might indirectly make it easier to introduce security-relevant weaknesses or make them more difficult to detect) This weakness can be primary to almost anything, depending on the context of the race condition. |
Resultant | (where the weakness is a quality issue that might indirectly make it easier to introduce security-relevant weaknesses or make them more difficult to detect) This weakness can be resultant from insufficient compartmentalization ( CWE-653), incorrect locking, improper initialization or shutdown, or a number of other weaknesses. |
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 (this CWE ID could be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities) | Reason: Acceptable-Use | Rationale: This CWE entry is at the Base level of abstraction, which is a preferred level of abstraction for mapping to the root causes of vulnerabilities. | Comments: Carefully read both the name and description to ensure that this mapping is an appropriate fit. Do not try to 'force' a mapping to a lower-level Base/Variant simply to comply with this preferred level of abstraction. |
Notes Relationship Can overlap signal handler race conditions. Research Gap Under-studied as a concept. Frequency unknown; few vulnerability reports give enough detail to know when a context switching race condition is a factor. Taxonomy Mappings | Mapped Taxonomy Name | Node ID | Fit | Mapped Node Name |
|---|
| PLOVER | | | Context Switching Race Condition |
References
[REF-44] Michael Howard, David LeBlanc
and John Viega. "24 Deadly Sins of Software Security". "Sin 13: Race Conditions." Page 205. McGraw-Hill. 2010.
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