CAPEC-10: Buffer Overflow via Environment Variables
This attack pattern involves causing a buffer overflow through manipulation of environment variables. Once the adversary finds that they can modify an environment variable, they may try to overflow associated buffers. This attack leverages implicit trust often placed in environment variables.
Although the focus of this attack is putting excessive content into an environment variable that is loaded into a buffer, environment variables can be used to assist a classic buffer overflow attack as well. In the case where the buffer used in a traditional buffer overflow attack is not large enough to store the adversary's shell code, they will store the shell code in an environment variable and attempt to return to its address, rather than back into the data they wrote to the buffer.
Weaknesses
| # ID | Name | Type |
|---|---|---|
| CWE-20 | Improper Input Validation | weakness |
| CWE-74 | Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component ('Injection') | weakness |
| CWE-99 | Improper Control of Resource Identifiers ('Resource Injection') | weakness |
| CWE-118 | Incorrect Access of Indexable Resource ('Range Error') | weakness |
| CWE-119 | Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer | weakness |
| CWE-120 | Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input ('Classic Buffer Overflow') | weakness |
| CWE-302 | Authentication Bypass by Assumed-Immutable Data | weakness |
| CWE-680 | Integer Overflow to Buffer Overflow | weakness |
| CWE-697 | Incorrect Comparison | weakness |
| CWE-733 | Compiler Optimization Removal or Modification of Security-critical Code | weakness |
Taxonomiy Mapping
| Type | # ID | Name |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Attacks | Buffer Overflow via Environment Variables |