The description above is MITRE’s definition of CWE-640 in CWE 4.20, a base-level weakness.
Common consequences MITRE lists
- Access Control: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity
- Availability: DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)
- Integrity, Other: Other
Guides on this site
Account recovery: password resets, help-desk resets and account linking
Treat password resets, support-desk recovery and account linking as new grants of authority: single-use high-entropy proofs, atomic consumption, session revocation, and stable identity rather than email matching.
Prevent business-logic flaws with server-side invariants
Recompute prices on the server, run workflows as state machines, build reset links from configuration, limit valuable flows, and turn each business rule into an invariant that the database and the tests both check.
Stop account takeover with the right MFA and login defenses
Rank MFA options by the attacks they stop, implement TOTP and push approvals correctly, and close the login, reset and recovery paths that attackers use instead of breaking the second factor.
Abuse case library: tests and controls by feature
Recurring abuse cases for sign-up and login, password reset, MFA enrolment, invites, file upload, payments and coupons, webhooks, search, export, admin and AI chat or agents: the attacker goal, preconditions, a concrete test and the control, each linked to CWE and CAPEC.
Practice
References
This page is generated from MITRE’s CWE 4.20 catalogue (released 30 April 2026) and lists every guide, fix card and lab here that cites CWE-640.
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