Typical severity: High. Likelihood of attack: High. In this type of an attack, an adversary injects operating system commands into existing application functions. An application that uses untrusted input to build command strings is vulnerable. An adversary can leverage OS command injection in an application to elevate privileges, execute arbitrary commands and compromise the underlying operating system.
Use language APIs rather than relying on passing data to the operating system shell or command line. Doing so ensures that the available protection mechanisms in the language are intact and applicable. | Filter all incoming data to escape or remove characters or strings that can be potentially misinterpreted as operating system or shell commands | All application processes should be run with the minimal privileges required. Also, processes must shed privileges as soon as they no longer require them.