Vulnerabilities > CVE-2023-38538 - Race Condition vulnerability in Whatsapp

047910
CVSS 5.0 - MEDIUM
Attack vector
NETWORK
Attack complexity
HIGH
Privileges required
NONE
Confidentiality impact
LOW
Integrity impact
LOW
Availability impact
LOW
network
high complexity
whatsapp
CWE-362

Summary

A race condition in an event subsystem led to a heap use-after-free issue in established audio/video calls that could have resulted in app termination or unexpected control flow with very low probability.

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)

  • Leveraging Race Conditions
    This attack targets a race condition occurring when multiple processes access and manipulate the same resource concurrently and the outcome of the execution depends on the particular order in which the access takes place. The attacker can leverage a race condition by "running the race", modifying the resource and modifying the normal execution flow. For instance a race condition can occur while accessing a file, the attacker can trick the system by replacing the original file with his version and cause the system to read the malicious file.
  • Leveraging Time-of-Check and Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) Race Conditions
    This attack targets a race condition occurring between the time of check (state) for a resource and the time of use of a resource. The typical example is the file access. The attacker can leverage a file access race condition by "running the race", meaning that he would modify the resource between the first time the target program accesses the file and the time the target program uses the file. During that period of time, the attacker could do something such as replace the file and cause an escalation of privilege.