COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONIncomplete

CWE-1078

Inappropriate Source Code Style or Formatting

The source code does not follow desired style or formatting for indentation, white space, comments, etc.

Abstraction

Class

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The source code does not follow desired style or formatting for indentation, white space, comments, etc.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Increase Analytical Complexity

Affected security scopes: Other

Variations in indentation and other white space, comments, etc. can make it more difficult for human analysts to understand the actual behavior that is being implemented.

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.)

Automated Static Analysis - Source Code

An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) or linter can report or highlight this weaknesses.