CWE · MITRE source

CWE-551Incorrect Behavior Order: Authorization Before Parsing and Canonicalization

Abstraction: Base · CVEs in our corpus: 23

If a web server does not fully parse requested URLs before it examines them for authorization, it may be possible for an attacker to bypass authorization protection.

For instance, the character strings /./ and / both mean current directory. If /SomeDirectory is a protected directory and an attacker requests /./SomeDirectory, the attacker may be able to gain access to the resource if /./ is not converted to / before the authorization check is performed.

Last updated: 21 August 2026 20:21 UTC