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CWE-368

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CWE-368

Context Switching Race Condition

Base
Draft

Description

A product performs a series of non-atomic actions to switch between contexts that cross privilege or other security boundaries, but a race condition allows an attacker to modify or misrepresent the product's behavior during the switch.

This is commonly seen in web browser vulnerabilities in which the attacker can perform certain actions while the browser is transitioning from a trusted to an untrusted domain, or vice versa, and the browser performs the actions on one domain using the trust level and resources of the other domain.

Related Weaknesses

Common Consequences

Scope

Integrity
Confidentiality

Impact

Modify Application Data, Read Application Data

CVE-2009-1837

Chain: race condition (CWE-362) from improper handling of a page transition in web client while an applet is loading (CWE-368) leads to use after free (CWE-416)

CVE-2004-2260

Browser updates address bar as soon as user clicks on a link instead of when the page has loaded, allowing spoofing by redirecting to another page using onUnload method. ** this is one example of the role of "hooks" and context switches, and should be captured somehow - also a race condition of sorts **

CVE-2004-0191

XSS when web browser executes Javascript events in the context of a new page while it's being loaded, allowing interaction with previous page in different domain.

CVE-2004-2491

Web browser fills in address bar of clicked-on link before page has been loaded, and doesn't update afterward.

Applicable Platforms

Not Language-Specific

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