CVE-2022-42067 identifies an Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR) vulnerability in an Online Birth Certificate Management System version 1.0. IDOR vulnerabilities occur when an application exposes references to internal implementation objects such as files, database records, or keys, without proper access control checks. This allows an attacker with limited privileges to access or manipulate resources belonging to other users by modifying the value of a parameter used to directly point to an object. In this case, the vulnerability affects a system managing sensitive personal data—birth certificates. The CVSS 3.1 base score is 4.3 (medium severity), with the vector indicating network attack vector (AV:N), low attack complexity (AC:L), requiring low privileges (PR:L), no user interaction (UI:N), unchanged scope (S:U), and limited confidentiality impact (C:L), with no impact on integrity or availability. The vulnerability is classified under CWE-639, which is related to authorization bypass through improper access control. No vendor or product details are specified, and no patches or known exploits in the wild have been reported as of the publication date (October 14, 2022).

For European organizations, especially those managing civil registries or vital records, this vulnerability poses a risk of unauthorized access to sensitive personal data such as birth certificates. The confidentiality impact, while rated low, is significant given the nature of the data involved, which can be used for identity theft, fraud, or privacy violations. Since the vulnerability requires low privileges but no user interaction, an attacker with some level of authenticated access could exploit it remotely over the network. This could lead to unauthorized disclosure of personal data across different user accounts. The lack of impact on integrity and availability reduces the risk of data manipulation or service disruption but does not diminish the privacy concerns. European data protection regulations, including GDPR, impose strict requirements on protecting personal data, so exploitation of this vulnerability could result in regulatory penalties and reputational damage.

Organizations should implement strict access control checks on all object references within the Online Birth Certificate Management System. This includes validating that the authenticated user is authorized to access the requested resource before returning any data. Employing indirect references or mapping internal identifiers to external tokens can prevent direct object reference manipulation. Conduct thorough code reviews and penetration testing focusing on authorization logic. If possible, implement multi-factor authentication to reduce the risk of unauthorized access. Monitoring and logging access to sensitive records can help detect exploitation attempts. Since no patches are currently available, organizations should consider isolating or restricting network access to the vulnerable system and applying compensating controls such as web application firewalls with rules to detect suspicious parameter tampering. Finally, organizations should prepare incident response plans in case of data exposure.