CWE-841: Improper Enforcement of Behavioral Workflow
Learn about CWE-841 (Improper Enforcement of Behavioral Workflow), its security impact, exploitation methods, and prevention guidelines.
What is Improper Enforcement of Behavioral Workflow?
• Overview: Improper Enforcement of Behavioral Workflow occurs when a system allows actions to be performed out of the required sequence, which can lead to business logic manipulation or invalid states.
• Exploitation Methods:
- Attackers exploit this by performing actions in an unexpected order or by skipping necessary steps.
- Common attack patterns include bypassing authentication steps or directly accessing functionality without completing prerequisite actions.
• Security Impact:
- Direct consequences include unauthorized access or actions being performed without proper validation.
- Potential cascading effects might involve data corruption, security breaches, or system instability.
- Business impact can be significant, leading to loss of data integrity, regulatory non-compliance, and damage to reputation.
• Prevention Guidelines:
- Specific code-level fixes include implementing strict checks to enforce the correct sequence of actions.
- Security best practices involve validating each step in a workflow and ensuring no steps can be skipped or reordered.
- Recommended tools and frameworks include those that support workflow validation and enforce state management, such as BPMN engines or custom middleware for sequence control.
Technical Details
Likelihood of Exploit: Not specified
Affected Languages: Not specified
Affected Technologies: Not specified