What is Broken Access Control and How to Prevent It?

Access control fundamentally secures systems by controlling and monitoring who can access resources or perform actions. Broken access control, on the other hand, is a vulnerability that is devoid of proper access control; Hence, the users could act or get access to resources to which they really should not have the authorization. This might yield full access to unauthorized data and may even modify it, apart from the compromise one could get over a system. 

Here you will see what is broken access control. However, broken access control vulnerabilities are a high-worry NIC for any enterprise or organization of all sizes, considering that they can have serious implications ranging from data breaches to compliance violations to reputational damage.

What Is the Vulnerability of Broken Access Control?

Broken Access Control refers to a situation when a system or its application is incapable of effectively restricting actions that a user makes in accordance with the permissions allocated to them. This could emanate from various reasons: incorrect configuration of access control policies, not properly validating user input, and improper user session handling.

In case broken access control vulnerabilities are there, attackers may leverage them to unauthorized sensitive data access, execute some actions they ought not to, or even escalate their privileges within the system.

Types of Broken Access Control Attacks

URL manipulation 

The attacker can just try to get other resources or perform some actions that he shouldn’t be able to by changing parameters in a URL. For example, a change of a user ID in a URL from “user=123” to “user=456” could return access to another user’s account.

Exploiting Endpoints

Applications leaking APIs or endpoints that do not check for access control are vulnerable to Broken Access Control attacks. Attackers might be able to directly call those endpoints, performing, for example, the deletion of data or alteration of configurations.

Elevating User Privilege

This can also lead to the elevation of privileges of the attackers within the system.For instance, a regular user account can perform actions that administrators should restrict, such as creating user accounts and changing system settings.

Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR)

An application creates IDOR vulnerabilities when it directly accesses objects using user-supplied input without verifying if the user is authorized to view those objects. Attackers can manipulate this input and get access to objects they shouldn’t have access to. Prevent such security breaches with a CISSP course, globally benchmarked to equip you with designing, implementing, and managing top-tier cyber security programs.

Related Post Secure session handling in PHP to prevent hijacking

How to Identify a Broken Access Control Vulnerability ?

The Vulnerabilities of Broken access control are recognized through testing of the access mechanisms in place within an application. Here are some points

• • • Testing of access to restricted resources or carrying out restricted actions on behalf of different authorized users
    • Tampering with URLs, parameters, and headers in an effort to circumvent access control
    • Attempts to note the application’s behaviour with respect to invalid or unexpected input
    • Reviewing source codes and configuration of the application, looking for probable access control issues

Though manual testing currently identifies most  vulnerabilities, automated tools like web application scanners will typically identify most.

Here are the most identical ways to find a broken access control vulnerability.

Impact and Risk of Broken Access Controls

It may have huge impacts on operations through data breaches, unauthorized access, non-compliance, and resultant regulatory penalties, operational disruptions, system compromise, reputational damage and loss of customer trust. You should also know how to prevent broken access control vulnerability

All that changes if a Broken Access Control vulnerability has another way of being exploited. Then, the attacker will access all the data or resources or modify them in some way. Any unauthorized access or change can be dangerous for an organization.

How to Prevent Broken Access Control Vulnerability

This might include security measures that avoid broken access control vulnerability. First and foremost, ensure authentication and authorization mechanisms are correctly followed with strong password policies and multi-factor authentication to prevent privilege escalations—these might be done by regularly auditing and checking user permissions to make sure that users have access only to relevant resources. Role-based access control will manage permissions for us.

Apart from that, develop secure coding skills and input and output validation to prevent unauthorized access. Besides, regular security training for the developers and users may help them identify and measure the threat against their systems.

Continuous monitoring for updating security policies, vulnerability assessments, and penetration testing are necessary for the timely identification and workaround of the weaknesses in a system.

Access validation

You must enact all access control decisions on the server side. Ensure that you properly validate and sanitize user input to prevent injection attacks. Build input validation mechanisms to prevent an application from processing malicious input.

Ways prevent Broken Access Control

Implement the Principle of Least Privilege

• Emulate: Grant the minimum permission set to be used by users to perform their tasks.
• Deny by default and review on a regular basis, updating access control policies
• Use Role-Based Access Control or Attribute-Based Access Control.

Secure Session and Authentication Controls

• Implement effective authentication mechanisms, including multi-factor authentication.
• Ensure that session management is secure and resistant to attacks like session hijacking and fixation. Establish secure session tokens and session timeouts.

Regular Access Control Audits and Reviews

• The application regularly audits and reviews the access control mechanisms
• Automated and manual testing will be conducted while code reviews and configuration checks are done at the same time
• Run vulnerability management to monitor and resolve the identified vulnerabilities

Good Error Handling and Logging

• Assure that upon encountering an error; the application gracefully handles it without making sensitive information available from error messages
• Logging functions that are robust enough to keep track of and monitor access control-related events
• The logs should be reviewed and analyzed on a regular basis in order to detect a security incident or suspicious activity.

Using these best practices and regularly reviewing access control mechanisms will update them and, to a greater extent, reduce Broken Access Control vulnerabilities that may risk systems and data from potential attacks. 

Related Post : What is Cyber Threat Intelligence

Conclusion

Broken Access Control vulnerabilities may lead to a very critical impact on an organization, such as data breaches, compliance violations, or even system compromise. Organizations ought to offer different security countermeasures in an attempt to realize zero vulnerability situations. 

These countermeasures should obtrude the principle of least privilege, access validation, secure session-management and authentication controls, regular access control audits and reviews, and proper error handling and logging.

Missing access level vulnerabilities increase the chances of unauthorized access. Therefore, implementing best practices in access control and fixing broken access control vulnerabilities are very important to reduce such risks. Additional training and awareness on secure coding and access control should be provided to all developers and security personnel to make sure access controls are implemented correctly and maintained over time.

Whereas threat vectors are always changing, at the same time, it is incumbent upon organizations to modify their strategies in response to such security exposures. Access control security is, therefore, a prime concern enterprises take seriously in their efforts to devise improved security measures to provide stronger protection of assets and customer and stakeholder trust.

FAQs

What broken access control created the problems?

Broken Access Control vulnerabilities may further lead to unauthorized access to sensitive data, privilege escalation, and system compromise, which potentially leads to data breaches, compliance violations, and reputational damage.

Who can exploit broken access control vulnerabilities?

In general, all types of assailants, internal or external, are in a position to use Broken Access Control vulnerabilities to illegitimately gain access to resources and carry out actions they shouldn’t have permission for.

What is the difference between broken access control and broken authentication?

Broken Authentication vulnerabilities deal with problems within a mechanism for authenticating users. The vulnerabilities deal with issues in authorizing a user to access resources. It also executes an action on them based on permission granted to the said user.

What is the vulnerability of broken access control?

Other names for Broken Access Control vulnerabilities include Incorrect Access Control, which occurs when you implement access control measures poorly. It allows users to perform actions or access resources that they really shouldn’t have permission for. What 

Does a broken access control vulnerability look like?

It is the type of vulnerability that occurs when a system or an application does not appropriately constrain user actions by their permission assignments to their respective roles. This can potentially allow users to perform unauthorized actions or gain access to important data.

Why is broken access control common?

Broken Access Control vulnerabilities are quite common. This vulnerability held first place on the 2021 OWASP Top 10 list of security risks, influencing 94% of tested applications. This shows just how common it is and underlines the criticality of the overlaid measures of sturdy access control in modern best practices of software development for improved security.