Exposure of Data Element to Wrong Session

Draft Base
Structure: Simple
Description

The product does not sufficiently enforce boundaries between the states of different sessions, causing data to be provided to, or used by, the wrong session.

Extended Description

Data can "bleed" from one session to another through member variables of singleton objects, such as Servlets, and objects from a shared pool. In the case of Servlets, developers sometimes do not understand that, unless a Servlet implements the SingleThreadModel interface, the Servlet is a singleton; there is only one instance of the Servlet, and that single instance is used and re-used to handle multiple requests that are processed simultaneously by different threads. A common result is that developers use Servlet member fields in such a way that one user may inadvertently see another user's data. In other words, storing user data in Servlet member fields introduces a data access race condition.

Common Consequences 1
Scope: Confidentiality

Impact: Read Application Data

Detection Methods 1
Automated Static AnalysisHigh
Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)
Potential Mitigations 3
Phase: Architecture and Design
Protect the application's sessions from information leakage. Make sure that a session's data is not used or visible by other sessions.
Phase: Testing
Use a static analysis tool to scan the code for information leakage vulnerabilities (e.g. Singleton Member Field).
Phase: Architecture and Design
In a multithreading environment, storing user data in Servlet member fields introduces a data access race condition. Do not use member fields to store information in the Servlet.
Demonstrative Examples 1
The following Servlet stores the value of a request parameter in a member field and then later echoes the parameter value to the response output stream.

Code Example:

Bad
Java
java
While this code will work perfectly in a single-user environment, if two users access the Servlet at approximately the same time, it is possible for the two request handler threads to interleave in the following way: Thread 1: assign "Dick" to name Thread 2: assign "Jane" to name Thread 1: print "Jane, thanks for visiting!" Thread 2: print "Jane, thanks for visiting!" Thereby showing the first user the second user's name.
References 1
Seven Pernicious Kingdoms: A Taxonomy of Software Security Errors
Katrina Tsipenyuk, Brian Chess, and Gary McGraw
NIST Workshop on Software Security Assurance Tools Techniques and MetricsNIST
07-11-2005
ID: REF-6
Applicable Platforms
Languages:
Not Language-Specific : Undetermined
Modes of Introduction
Implementation
Taxonomy Mapping
  • 7 Pernicious Kingdoms