CAPEC Details
Name Exploiting Trust in Client
Likelyhood of attack Typical severity
High High
Summary An attack of this type exploits vulnerabilities in client/server communication channel authentication and data integrity. It leverages the implicit trust a server places in the client, or more importantly, that which the server believes is the client. An attacker executes this type of attack by communicating directly with the server where the server believes it is communicating only with a valid client. There are numerous variations of this type of attack.
Prerequisites Server software must rely on client side formatted and validated values, and not reinforce these checks on the server side.
Solutions Design: Ensure that client process and/or message is authenticated so that anonymous communications and/or messages are not accepted by the system. Design: Do not rely on client validation or encoding for security purposes. Design: Utilize digital signatures to increase authentication assurance. Design: Utilize two factor authentication to increase authentication assurance. Implementation: Perform input validation for all remote content.
Related Weaknesses
CWE ID Description
CWE-20 Improper Input Validation
CWE-200 Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor
CWE-287 Improper Authentication
CWE-290 Authentication Bypass by Spoofing
CWE-693 Protection Mechanism Failure