CWE-363: Race Condition Enabling Link Following

ID CWE-363

Abstraction Base

Structure Simple

Status Draft

Number of CVEs 4

The product checks the status of a file or directory before accessing it, which produces a race condition in which the file can be replaced with a link before the access is performed, causing the product to access the wrong file.

While developers might expect that there is a very narrow time window between the time of check and time of use, there is still a race condition. An attacker could cause the product to slow down (e.g. with memory consumption), causing the time window to become larger. Alternately, in some situations, the attacker could win the race by performing a large number of attacks.

Modes of Introduction

Phase	Note
Architecture and Design
Implementation

Applicable Platforms

Type	Class	Name	Prevalence
Language	Not Language-Specific

Relationships

View			Weakness
# ID	View	Status	# ID	Name	Abstraction	Structure	Status
CWE-1000	Research Concepts	Draft	CWE-367	Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition	Base	Simple	Incomplete
CWE-1000	Research Concepts	Draft	CWE-59	Improper Link Resolution Before File Access ('Link Following')	Base	Simple	Draft

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)

The Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC™) effort provides a publicly available catalog of common attack patterns that helps users understand how adversaries exploit weaknesses in applications and other cyber-enabled capabilities.

CAPEC at Mitre.org

# ID	Name	Weaknesses
CAPEC-26	Leveraging Race Conditions	CWE-363

CVEs Published

Based on CVE published date

CVSS Severity

CVSS Severity - By Year

CVSS Base Score

# CVE	Description	CVSS	EPSS	EPSS Trend (30 days)	Affected Products	Weaknesses	Security Advisories	Exploits	PoC	Pubblication Date	Modification Date
# CVE	Description	CVSS	EPSS	EPSS Trend (30 days)	Affected Products	Weaknesses	Security Advisories	PoC	Pubblication Date	Modification Date