The Confused Deputy Problem: when high-privilege processes are tricked into reading low-privilege files
wavefnx · x · 2026-11-15
Security researcher wavefnx highlights his favorite vulnerability class: a high-privileged process being forced to read lower-privilege files (e.g., via symlinks)—the Confused Deputy Problem.
The attached Wikipedia entry explains it: a program is tricked by a less-privileged program into misusing its authority. Classic example: a compiler on a timesharing system overwrites the billing file it can write but the user cannot. Capability-based security mitigates it by eliminating ambient authority, while ACL-based systems do not; formally verified systems like seL4 enforce capability constraints in the kernel.
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