COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONIncomplete

CWE-1188

Initialization of a Resource with an Insecure Default

The product initializes or sets a resource with a default that is intended to be changed by the product's installer, administrator, or maintainer, but the default is not secure.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product initializes or sets a resource with a default that is intended to be changed by the product's installer, administrator, or maintainer, but the default is not secure.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Developers often choose default values that leave the product as open and easy to use as possible out-of-the-box, under the assumption that the administrator can (or should) change the default value. However, this ease-of-use comes at a cost when the default is insecure and the administrator does not change it.

Lifecycle phase

System Configuration

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Varies by Context

Affected security scopes: Other

The impact of insecure defaults varies widely depending on the functionality that the product controls.

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

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.)