CWE-941: Incorrectly Specified Destination in a Communication Channel

CWE-941: Incorrectly Specified Destination in a Communication Channel is a Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) entry maintained by MITRE. The product creates a communication channel to initiate an outgoing request to an actor, but it does not correctly specify the intended destination for that actor. Attackers at the destination may be able to spoof trusted servers to steal data or cause a denial of service. There are at least two distinct weaknesses that can cause the product to communicate with an unintended destination: If the product allows an attacker to control which destination is specified, then the attacker can cause it to connect to an untrusted or malicious destination. For example, because UDP is a connectionless protocol, UDP packets can be spoofed by specifying a false source address in the packet; when the server receives the packet and sends a reply, it will specify a destination by using the source of the incoming packet - i.e., the false source. The server can then be tricked into sending traffic to the wrong host, which is effective for hiding the real source of an attack and for conducting a distributed denial of service (DDoS). As another example, server-side request forgery (SSRF) and XML External Entity (XXE) can be used to trick a server into making outgoing requests to hosts that cannot be directly accessed by the attacker due to firewall restrictions. If the product incorrectly specifies the destination, then an attacker who can control this destination might be able to spoof trusted servers. While the most common occurrence is likely due to misconfiguration by an administrator, this can be resultant from other weaknesses. For example, the product might incorrectly parse an e-mail or IP address and send sensitive data to an unintended destination. As another example, an Android application may use a "sticky broadcast" to communicate with a receiver for a particular application, but since sticky broadcasts can be processed by *any* receiver, this can allow a malicious application to access restricted data that was only intended for a different application.

If exploited, CWE-941 (Incorrectly Specified Destination in a Communication Channel) it can compromise Access Control and Other, leading to outcomes such as Gain Privileges or Assume Identity, Varies by Context and Bypass Protection Mechanism.

CWE-941 commonly affects Not Language-Specific. Note that weaknesses are often language-agnostic patterns, so secure coding practices apply broadly.

MITRE documents real CVEs mapped to CWE-941, including CVE-2013-5211, CVE-1999-0513 and CVE-1999-1379. You can look up the full details of each CVE, including CVSS scores and remediation guidance, on our CVE Lookup tool.

A CWE (Common Weakness Enumeration) like CWE-941 describes a category of software weakness — the underlying flaw type. A CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) identifies a specific, real-world vulnerability in a particular product. In short, a CWE is the kind of mistake, and a CVE is an instance of that mistake being found in software.