Overview

Security based on event locations are insecure and can be spoofed.

Consequences

• Authorization: If one trusts the system-event information and executes commands based on it, one could potentially take actions based on a spoofed identity.

Exposure period

• Design through Implementation: Trusting unauthenticated information for authentication is a design flaw.

Platform

• Languages: Any

• Operating platforms: Any

Required resources

Any

Severity

High

Likelihood of exploit

High

Avoidance and mitigation

• Design through Implementation: Never trust or rely any of the information in an Event for security.

Discussion

Events are a messaging system which may provide control data to programs listening for events. Events often do not have any type of authentication framework to allow them to be verified from a trusted source.

Any application, in Windows, on a given desktop can send a message to any window on the same desktop. There is no authentication framework for these messages. Therefore, any message can be used to manipulate any process on the desktop if the process does not check the validity and safeness of those messages.

Examples

In Java:

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
  if (e.getSource()==button) 
    System.out.println("print out secret information");
}