A weakness has been identified in Chess Play and Learn App up to 4.9.42 on Android. This issue affects some unknown processing of the file AndroidManifest.xml of the component com.chess. This manipulation causes exposure of backup file to an unauthorized control sphere. It is feasible to perform the attack on the physical device. The exploit has been made available to the public and could be used for attacks. Upgrading the affected component is advised. The vendor was informed early about this issue. They confirmed the existence and that they will address it. Furthermore, they explain that their bug bounty explicitly excludes physical-access attacks. However, they appreciate the quality of the report and aim at making a goodwill payment to the researcher.
Weakness
The product does not perform or incorrectly performs an authorization check when an actor attempts to access a resource or perform an action.
Potential Mitigations
- Divide the product into anonymous, normal, privileged, and administrative areas. Reduce the attack surface by carefully mapping roles with data and functionality. Use role-based access control (RBAC) to enforce the roles at the appropriate boundaries.
- Note that this approach may not protect against horizontal authorization, i.e., it will not protect a user from attacking others with the same role.
- Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
- For example, consider using authorization frameworks such as the JAAS Authorization Framework [REF-233] and the OWASP ESAPI Access Control feature [REF-45].
- For web applications, make sure that the access control mechanism is enforced correctly at the server side on every page. Users should not be able to access any unauthorized functionality or information by simply requesting direct access to that page.
- One way to do this is to ensure that all pages containing sensitive information are not cached, and that all such pages restrict access to requests that are accompanied by an active and authenticated session token associated with a user who has the required permissions to access that page.
References