CWE-250: Execution with Unnecessary Privileges

The product performs an operation at a privilege level that is higher than the minimum level required, which creates new weaknesses or amplifies the consequences of other weaknesses.

Consequences

• Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity, Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands, Read Application Data, DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart

How to prevent it

• Architecture and Design, Operation: Run your code using the lowest privileges that are required to accomplish the necessary tasks [REF-76]. If possible, create isolated accounts with limited privileges that are only used for a single task. That way, a successful attack will not immediately give the attacker access to the rest of the software or its environment. For example, database applications rarely need to run as the database administrator, especially in day-to-day operations.
• Architecture and Design: Identify the functionality that requires additional privileges, such as access to privileged operating system resources. Wrap and centralize this functionality if possible, and isolate the privileged code as much as possible from other code [REF-76]. Raise privileges as late as possible, and drop them as soon as possible to avoid CWE-271. Avoid weaknesses such as CWE-288 and CWE-420 by protecting all possible communication channels that could interact with the privileged code, such as a secondary socket that is only intended to be accessed by administrators.
• Architecture and Design: Identify the functionality that requires additional privileges, such as access to privileged operating system resources. Wrap and centralize this functionality if possible, and isolate the privileged code as much as possible from other code [REF-76]. Raise privileges as late as possible, and drop them as soon as possible to avoid CWE-271. Avoid weaknesses such as CWE-288 and CWE-420 by protecting all possible communication channels that could interact with the privileged code, such as a secondary socket that is only intended to be accessed by administrators.
• Implementation: Perform extensive input validation for any privileged code that must be exposed to the user and reject anything that does not fit your strict requirements.
• Implementation: When dropping privileges, ensure that they have been dropped successfully to avoid CWE-273. As protection mechanisms in the environment get stronger, privilege-dropping calls may fail even if it seems like they would always succeed.
• Implementation: If circumstances force you to run with extra privileges, then determine the minimum access level necessary. First identify the different permissions that the software and its users will need to perform their actions, such as file read and write permissions, network socket permissions, and so forth. Then explicitly allow those actions while denying all else [REF-76]. Perform extensive input validation and canonicalization to minimize the chances of introducing a separate vulnerability. This mitigation is much more prone to error than dropping the privileges in the first place.
• Operation, System Configuration: Ensure that the software runs properly under the United States Government Configuration Baseline (USGCB) [REF-199] or an equivalent hardening configuration guide, which many organizations use to limit the attack surface and potential risk of deployed software.

Recent advisories

• GHSA-m63v-2g9w-2w6v — Fission: Environment Runtime.Container and Builder.Container SecurityContext bypass allows privileged pod creation
• GHSA-8wcj-mfrc-jx5q — Fission builder pods auto-mount the fission-builder ServiceAccount token in the user-supplied builder container
• GHSA-7pjr-qpvh-m339 — Fission builder accepts arbitrary buildcmd strings from Environment.spec.builder.command, allowing the builder pod to invoke arbitrary executables
• GHSA-85g2-pmrx-r49q — Fission runtime pods automount the fission-fetcher service-account token into the user function container, granting function code namespace-wide secret / configmap read
• GHSA-2wvh-87g2-89hr — OpenC3 COSMOS: Permissions Bypass Provides User Access to Unassigned Administrative Actions via Script Runner Tool
• GHSA-p443-p7w5-2f7f — OliveTin's RestartAction always runs actions as guest
• GHSA-w7j5-j98m-w679 — OpenClaw has multiple E2E/test Dockerfiles that run all processes as root
• GHSA-w235-x559-36mg — OpenClaw: Docker container escape via unvalidated bind mount config injection
• CVE-2025-40602 — A local privilege escalation vulnerability due to insufficient authorization in the SonicWall SMA1000 appliance management console (AMC).
• GHSA-gp5f-cx7h-8q6f — Apache Airflow's create action can upsert existing Pools/Connections/Variables
• GHSA-273c-4g26-4jpm — Apache Airflow `/api/v2/dagReports` executes DAG Python in API
• GHSA-68r2-fwcg-qpm8 — Apache Solr vulnerable to Execution with Unnecessary Privileges
• GHSA-xcvc-5hgv-phqg — open-webui Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR) vulnerability
• CVE-2024-38813 — The vCenter Server contains a privilege escalation vulnerability.
• GHSA-92xg-gmrq-5c3w — Apache Airflow vulnerable to Execution with Unnecessary Privileges

All advisories for CWE-250