CAPEC-74
Manipulating State
The adversary modifies state information maintained by the target software or causes a state transition in hardware. If successful, the target will use this tainted state and execute in an unintended manner.
State management is an important function within a software application. User state maintained by the application can include usernames, payment information, browsing history as well as application-specific contents such as items in a shopping cart. Manipulating user state can be employed by an adversary to elevate privilege, conduct fraudulent transactions or otherwise modify the flow of the application to derive certain benefits.
If there is a hardware logic error in a finite state machine, the adversary can use this to put the system in an undefined state which could cause a denial of service or exposure of secure data.
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Explain the attack pattern CAPEC-74: Manipulating State: how it unfolds, what it needs and how to prevent and detect it in my systems. Use https://capec.mitre.org/data/definitions/74.html and https://cve.bz/cve/capec/74?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.
Adversary determines the nature of state management employed by the target. This includes determining the location (client-side, server-side or both applications) and possibly the items stored as part of user state.
Experiment
They probe what they found.
The adversary now tries to modify the user state contents (possibly indiscriminately if the contents are encrypted or otherwise obfuscated) or cause a state transition and observe the effects of this change on the target.
Exploit
They carry out the attack.
Having determined how to manipulate the state, the adversary can perform illegitimate actions.
Prerequisites
User state is maintained at least in some way in user-controllable locations, such as cookies or URL parameters.
There is a faulty finite state machine in the hardware logic that can be exploited.
Skills required
- Medium skill
The adversary needs to have knowledge of state management as employed by the target application, and also the ability to manipulate the state in a meaningful way.
Resources required
The adversary needs a data tampering tool capable of generating and creating custom inputs to aid in the attack, like Fiddler, Wireshark, or a similar in-browser plugin (e.g., Tamper Data for Firefox).
Consequences
| Impact | Affects | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Gain Privileges | Confidentiality, Access Control, Authorization | |
| Modify Data | Integrity | |
| Unreliable Execution | Availability |
Mitigations
Do not rely solely on user-controllable locations, such as cookies or URL parameters, to maintain user state.
Avoid sensitive information, such as usernames or authentication and authorization information, in user-controllable locations.
Sensitive information that is part of the user state must be appropriately protected to ensure confidentiality and integrity at each request.
All possible states must be handled by hardware finite state machines.
Weaknesses it exploits
- CWE-315 Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information in a Cookie
- CWE-353 Missing Support for Integrity Check
- CWE-372 Incomplete Internal State Distinction
- CWE-693 Protection Mechanism Failure
- CWE-1245 Improper Finite State Machines (FSMs) in Hardware Logic
- CWE-1253 Incorrect Selection of Fuse Values
- CWE-1265 Unintended Reentrant Invocation of Non-reentrant Code Via Nested Calls
- CWE-1271 Uninitialized Value on Reset for Registers Holding Security Settings
Recent CVEs with these weaknesses
- 6.5CVE-2026-18668
IBM Sterling File Gateway 6.2.1.0 through 6.2.1.2_1 and 6.2.2.0 - 6.2.2.1_1 could allow a remote attacker to perform protocol downgrade attacks due to a security misconfiguration.
- 3.6CVE-2026-102618
IBM i 7.6, 7.5, 7.4, and 7.3 could allow an authenticated user to indirectly disable system auditing, which they otherwise don't have authority to disable.
- 6.9CVE-2026-123556
ZcashFoundation Zebra from 4.5.0 before 7.0.0 contains a protection mechanism failure that bans honest peers by scoring mempool lock-time rejections at the ban threshold. Attackers can broadcast transactions locked until the current height…
- 5.5CVE-2025-55002
JupyterLab Desktop is the cross-platform desktop application for JupyterLab. Prior to 4.6.2-1, JupyterLab Desktop for macOS shipped with Electron's RunAsNode fuse enabled, allowing ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE to execute arbitrary Node.js code in …
- 5.5CVE-2025-54991
JupyterLab Desktop is the cross-platform desktop application for JupyterLab. Prior to 4.6.2-1, JupyterLab Desktop for macOS declared the com.apple.security.cs.allow-dyld-environment-variables entitlement, allowing the dynamic linker to hon…
- 8.2CVE-2026-119170
There was a regression in how FIPS algorithms were enforced for the hashlib module. Only users that are using OpenSSL in FIPS mode are affected. Only Python 3.14.10 is affected, all other Python versions are unaffected.
- –CVE-2026-83494
A flaw was found in the training-operator. An incorrect object casting in the PyTorchJob ValidateUpdate webhook allows users to bypass an immutability check. This vulnerability could enable users to detach a queued job from its quota manag…
- –CVE-2026-103863
Improper neutralization of input during web page generation ('cross-site scripting') vulnerability in Apache Sling Engine. Content-Type, charset, and redirect changes from an included component evade the protectheaders / checkcontenttype …
The newest records naming one of them. Each weakness's page lists them all.
Related attack patterns
Examples
During the authentication process, an application stores the authentication decision (auth=0/1) in unencrypte…
During the authentication process, an application stores the authentication decision (auth=0/1) in unencrypted cookies. At every request, this cookie is checked to permit or deny a request.
An adversary can easily violate this representation of user state and set auth=1 at every request in order to gain illegitimate access and elevated privilege in the application.
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