CVE-2021-23874

Policy addresses roles, responsibilities, and privilege management to prevent improper privilege assignments.

Implements core proper privilege management by restricting to only required rights.

Policy requires training on privilege management and least privilege, making it harder to exploit improper privilege management weaknesses.

Training covers proper privilege management practices, making incorrect privilege assignments less likely.

The control mandates review of privilege assignments to ensure they are appropriate and minimal.

Baseline configuration documents and controls privilege assignments, making improper privilege management harder to introduce or sustain.

Manages privileges for change control activities and provides oversight to prevent improper privilege use in configuration updates.

Reviewing changes for security impacts prevents introduction of improper privilege assignments or escalations.

A.5.1 only requires the existence of an overarching policy and topic-specific policies (including on access control); it does not itself enforce, implement, or act on permissions and therefore cannot stop CWE-732 from being exploitable.

A.5.12 only defines and communicates a classification scheme (with owners accountable for applying it); it does not itself enforce, restrict or decide any permissions, so the CWE-732 permission flaw can still be present and exploitable.

A.5.15 directly mandates determining access requirements, defining/enforcing topic-specific access control policy, assigning rights/restrictions by entity/role, consistency with classification, need-to-know, privileged access restrictions, segregation, formal authorization, and dynamic rules — which stops most improper privilege management from being exploitable; bounded remainder is flawed implementation of those rules (e.g. incorrect mapping or enforcement bugs).

A.5.18 directly governs the provisioning, review, modification and timely revocation of access rights (including for role changes, termination and privilege levels), which stops most improper privilege spheres from being exploitable even if the assignment flaw exists; the bounded remainder is flaws in the underlying enforcement mechanism itself (e.g. AC-3/A.8.3)

Defining and communicating authorization levels for each role limits the assignment of excessive or unnecessary privileges.

Monitoring supplier policy changes and conducting audits can reveal incorrect permission assignments on resources managed by the supplier, prompting corrective action before they are exploited.