CWE-837

Base Abstraction Level
Pillar — Highest-level weakness category
Class — Abstract, language-independent
Base — Specific enough to detect
Variant — Tied to specific technology
Compound — Requires multiple weaknesses
Incomplete MITRE CWE Status
Stable — Fully reviewed and complete
Draft — Under development, may change
Incomplete — Partially defined by MITRE
Deprecated — No longer recommended
Obsolete — Replaced by another CWE
Improper Enforcement of a Single, Unique Action

Description

The product requires that an actor should only be able to perform an action once, or to have only one unique action, but the product does not enforce or improperly enforces this restriction.

In various applications, a user is only expected to perform a certain action once, such as voting, requesting a refund, or making a purchase. When this restriction is not enforced, sometimes this can have security implications. For example, in a voting application, an attacker could attempt to "stuff the ballot box" by voting multiple times. If these votes are counted separately, then the attacker could directly affect who wins the vote. This could have significant business impact depending on the purpose of the product.

Consequences

Other — Varies by Context

An attacker might be able to gain advantage over other users by performing the action multiple times, or affect the correctness of the product.