CAPEC-162
Manipulating Hidden Fields
An adversary exploits a weakness in the server's trust of client-side processing by modifying data on the client-side, such as price information, and then submitting this data to the server, which processes the modified data. For example, eShoplifting is a data manipulation attack against an on-line merchant during a purchasing transaction. The manipulation of price, discount or quantity fields in the transaction message allows the adversary to acquire items at a lower cost than the merchant intended. The adversary performs a normal purchasing transaction but edits hidden fields within the HTML form response that store price or other information to give themselves a better deal. The merchant then uses the modified pricing information in calculating the cost of the selected items.
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Explain the attack pattern CAPEC-162: Manipulating Hidden Fields: how it unfolds, what it needs and how to prevent and detect it in my systems. Use https://capec.mitre.org/data/definitions/162.html and https://cve.bz/cve/capec/162?via=ask-ai-copy, which lists recent CVEs with the weaknesses it exploits. Cite the sources.Opens a third-party assistant; its answer is its own, not cve.bz's. The prompt holds only this attack pattern's id and public links.
How the attack unfolds
Explore
The attacker looks for a way in.
[Probe target web application] The adversary first probes the target web application to find all possible pages that can be visited on the website.
2 techniques
- Use a spidering tool to follow and record all links
- Use a proxy tool to record all links visited during a manual traversal of the web application.
[Find hidden fields] Once the web application has been traversed, the adversary looks for all hidden HTML fields present in the client-side.
2 techniques
- Use the inspect tool on all modern browsers and filter for the keyword "hidden"
- Specifically look for hidden fields inside form elements.
Experiment
They probe what they found.
[Send modified hidden fields to server-side] Once the adversary has found hidden fields in the client-side, they will modify the values of these hidden fields one by one and then interact with the web application so that this data is sent to the server-side. The adversary observes the response from the server to determine if the values of each hidden field are being validated.
Exploit
They carry out the attack.
[Manipulate hidden fields] Once the adversary has determined which hidden fields are not being validated by the server, they will manipulate them to change the normal behavior of the web application in a way that benefits the adversary.
1 technique
- Manipulate a hidden field inside a form element and then submit the form so that the manipulated data is sent to the server.
Prerequisites
The targeted site must contain hidden fields to be modified.
The targeted site must not validate the hidden fields with backend processing.
Resources required
The adversary must have the ability to modify hidden fields by editing the HTTP response to the server.
Weaknesses it exploits
- CWE-602 Client-Side Enforcement of Server-Side Security
Recent CVEs with these weaknesses
- 5.9CVE-2026-118795
Administrative roles and module permissions are stored in mutable local database fields, allowing privilege escalation for attackers with database write access.
- 4.3CVE-2026-112369
IBM Process Mining 2.0.0 through 2.2.1 could allow an authenticated user to perform unauthorized actions due to client-side enforcement of sever side security mechanisms.
- 8.2CVE-2026-122148
In Yealink MeetingBoard Pro before 331.320.0.64, the Web management module has a front-end validation bypass vulnerability. An attacker with administrator privileges can modify the page DOM to bypass front-end UI control logic and invoke s…
- 8.2CVE-2026-119746
ProSoft Technology ICX35 devices (X35-HWC-A and ICX35-HWC-E) contain a login lockout bypass in the integrated module web page. The account lockout mechanism that restricts repeated failed authentication attempts is enforced in client-side …
- 8.8CVE-2026-89293
In Eclipse Mnestix Browser versions 1.2.0 up until but excluding 2.3.0 it was possible for an unauthenticated attacker to perform actions that are only allowed to be executed by an authorized Mnestix user, like changing the Infrastructure …
- 5.3CVE-2026-117554
Admidio before 5.0.17 contains an improper access control vulnerability that allows authenticated members to register event guests by submitting the additional_guests field when guests are disallowed. Attackers can set additional_guests to…
- 5.5CVE-2026-116605
A vulnerability was found in SourceCodester Online Food Ordering System 1.0. The impacted element is an unknown function of the file order.php. The manipulation of the argument price/title results in client-side enforcement of server-side …
- 6.3CVE-2026-110314
Client-Side Enforcement of Server-Side Security vulnerability in the WebSocket connection handling of mtrudel bandit allows a remote client to keep running WebSock handler code after the server has stopped its connection, via data frames s…
The newest records naming one of them. Each weakness's page lists them all.
Related attack patterns
- Part of
- CAPEC-77 Manipulating User-Controlled Variables
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