Description

A protocol or its implementation supports interaction between multiple actors and allows those actors to negotiate which algorithm should be used as a protection mechanism such as encryption or authentication, but it does not select the strongest algorithm that is available to both parties.

Extended Description

When a security mechanism can be forced to downgrade to use a less secure algorithm, this can make it easier for attackers to compromise the product by exploiting weaker algorithm. The victim might not be aware that the less secure algorithm is being used. For example, if an attacker can force a communications channel to use cleartext instead of strongly-encrypted data, then the attacker could read the channel by sniffing, instead of going through extra effort of trying to decrypt the data using brute force techniques.

This table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined to give an overview of the different insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction.