1065
Description
The product receives a request, message, or directive from an upstream component, but the
product does not sufficiently preserve the original source of the request before forwarding the
request to an external actor that is outside of the product's control sphere. This causes the product
to appear to be the source of the request, leading it to act as a proxy or other intermediary between
the upstream component and the external actor.
Extended Description
If an attacker cannot directly contact a target, but the product has access to the target, then the
attacker can send a request to the product and have it be forwarded to the target. The request
would appear to be coming from the product's system, not the attacker's system. As a result, the
attacker can bypass access controls (such as firewalls) or hide the source of malicious requests,
since the requests would not be coming directly from the attacker.
Since proxy functionality and message-forwarding often serve a legitimate purpose, this issue only
becomes a vulnerability when:
• The product runs with different privileges or on a different system, or otherwise has different
levels of access than the upstream component;
• The attacker is prevented from making the request directly to the target; and
• The attacker can create a request that the proxy does not explicitly intend to be forwarded
on the behalf of the requester. Such a request might point to an unexpected hostname, port
number, hardware IP, or service. Or, the request might be sent to an allowed service, but the
request could contain disallowed directives, commands, or resources.
Relationships
The table(s) below shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this
weakness. These relationships are defined as ChildOf, ParentOf, MemberOr 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 may want to be explored.
Relevant to the view "Research Concepts" (CWE-1000)
Nature Type ID Name Page
ChildOf 610 Externally Controlled Reference to a Resource in Another
Sphere