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Home/CWEs/CWE-488
Common Weakness Enumeration

CWE-488: Exposure of Data Element to Wrong Session

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The product does not sufficiently enforce boundaries between the states of different sessions, causing data to be provided to, or used by, the wrong session.

Abstraction
Base
Related CVEs
0

▪References & documentation

https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/488.htmlNVD CWE listing

▪ How attackers exploit CWE-488

MITRE ATT&CK techniques associated with this weakness class (mapped via MITRE CAPEC). A vulnerability of this type could let an adversary carry out:

T1134Access Token Manipulationstealth · privilege-escalationT1185Browser Session HijackingcollectionT1550Use Alternate Authentication Materiallateral-movementT1563Remote Service Session Hijackinglateral-movementT1606Forge Web Credentialscredential-access

Step-by-step: how CWE-488 gets exploited

A stage-by-stage walkthrough of the attack, mapped to the real MITRE ATT&CK tactics for this weakness — what the attacker is trying to do, what's at risk (what can be stolen or damaged), and how you defend. Understanding the playbook is how you shut it down.

  1. 1
    Privilege escalationprivilege-escalation

    Gain higher privileges — from a limited account to admin/root.

    At risk / what's stolen

    Over-permissioned services, weak file/permission boundaries, and setuid paths.

    How you defend

    Drop privileges, enforce least privilege, and lock down file permissions.

  2. 2
    Credential accesscredential-access

    Steal passwords, tokens, keys, and session material.

    At risk / what's stolen

    Passwords, API keys, session tokens, SSH/TLS keys, and secrets in memory, env, or config.

    How you defend

    Secret managers, short-lived tokens, and no secrets in code/env/logs.

  3. 3
    Lateral movementlateral-movement

    Pivot from the compromised system to others on the network.

    At risk / what's stolen

    Adjacent servers, databases, and internal services reachable from the foothold.

    How you defend

    Segmentation, per-service auth, and blocking reused credentials across systems.

  4. 4
    Collectioncollection

    Gather the valuable data before taking it out.

    At risk / what's stolen

    Databases, files, customer records, source code, and business data.

    How you defend

    Data-access monitoring, encryption at rest, and least-privilege data access.

This is a defensive, conceptual walkthrough for education — stages reflect MITRE ATT&CK tactics associated with this weakness class, not a working exploit. Not every attack uses every stage.

▪ Related CVEs

No CVEs in the Gold index currently reference CWE-488. New matches appear here as the crawler indexes them.