COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONIncomplete

CWE-1071

Empty Code Block

The source code contains a block that does not contain any code, i.e., the block is empty.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The source code contains a block that does not contain any code, i.e., the block is empty.

Extended description

Empty code blocks can occur in the bodies of conditionals, function or method definitions, exception handlers, etc. While an empty code block might be intentional, it might also indicate incomplete implementation, accidental code deletion, unexpected macro expansion, etc. For some programming languages and constructs, an empty block might be allowed by the syntax, but the lack of any behavior within the block might violate a convention or API in such a way that it is an error.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Reduce Reliability

Affected security scopes: Other

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

  • Follow secure coding guidelines for input handling and boundary checking.
  • Enforce strict security reviews and automated static analysis (SAST) checks.

Verification

How is it detected?

Automated Static Analysis

High
Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)