CVE-2026-108921

Explicitly identifies and limits actions permitted without authentication, preventing critical functions from being exposed.

Access enforcement requires prior authentication before any authorization decision for critical functions.

Directly mandates unique identification and authentication of users before access to functions requiring identity.

Extends the same authentication requirement to non-organizational users accessing critical functionality.

Requires authentication of services before they can invoke or expose critical functions.

Managing identities and credentials is a prerequisite for authentication but does not itself enforce it on critical functions.

Directly requires authentication of users/services/hardware, which eliminates missing authentication for critical functions.

Defining and enforcing authorizations assumes prior authentication and therefore only partially mitigates the absence of authentication.

Protecting networks from unauthorized access can be undermined by missing authentication but does not address the root authentication gap.

Mandating segregated approval and oversight for non-human identities reduces the chance that weak or orphaned credentials can be exploited for unauthorized authentication.

A.5.17 directly mandates generation of non-guessable unique secrets, secure transmission, immediate change of defaults/temporary creds, strong password enforcement, no-reuse, and compromise response, which stops most improper-authentication exploits at source; the bounded remainder is non-password authentication methods and sufficiency-of-proof cases (e.g. IA-2/IA-5 enhancements) left to other controls.

Mandating authentication requirements for critical functions at the requirements-gathering stage ensures that essential operations are not left unprotected by missing login or verification mechanisms.