CVE-2026-79820

Enforces access only after approved authorizations, which presupposes correct authentication has occurred.

Mandates unique identification and authentication of organizational users before access, directly stopping improper authentication.

Requires unique identification and authentication of devices before establishing connections, preventing unauthenticated device claims.

Manages authenticators with verification and secure distribution, reducing opportunities for improper authentication.

Mandates unique identification and authentication of non-organizational users, directly addressing the weakness for external actors.

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.

Security requirements specified early and verified through testing drive the consistent implementation of authentication mechanisms, decreasing the likelihood that authentication steps are omitted or incorrectly applied.

A.8.26 explicitly requires identifying and addressing authentication-related requirements (including level of trust in identity via 8.5 and 5.17) as part of application development or acquisition, which prevents a slice of CWE-287 but leaves the dominant sufficiency-of-proof aspects (IA-2/IA-5) and many implementation defects untouched.

A.8.27 mandates security-by-design principles (least privilege, default-deny, never-trust/always-verify, MFA, end-to-end encryption of requests, distrust-external-input, secure session control, and explicit authentication/authorization in every layer), which directly stops most improper-authentication flaws from being exploitable; the bounded remainder is insufficient-proof cases that live only in the strength or correctness of the credential itself (IA-5/IA-2 territory).

A.8.5 directly mandates appropriate-strength authentication techniques, MFA for critical systems, protected log-on procedures, brute-force resistance, no cleartext passwords/transmission, and session controls that stop exploitation of insufficient proof of identity; the bounded remainder is cases where the chosen technique itself is flawed or insufficiently implemented (e.g. weak biometrics without fallback).