COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONIncomplete

CWE-1284

Improper Validation of Specified Quantity in Input

The product receives input that is expected to specify a quantity (such as size or length), but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the quantity has the required properties.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product receives input that is expected to specify a quantity (such as size or length), but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the quantity has the required properties.

Extended description

Specified quantities include size, length, frequency, price, rate, number of operations, time, and others. Code may rely on specified quantities to allocate resources, perform calculations, control iteration, etc.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Since quantities are often used to affect resource allocation or process financial data, they are often present in many places in the code.

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Varies by ContextDoS: Resource Consumption (CPU)Modify MemoryRead Memory

Affected security scopes: Other, Integrity, Availability

When the quantity is not properly validated, then attackers can specify malicious quantities to cause excessive resource allocation, trigger unexpected failures, enable buffer overflows, etc.

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

Implementation

Input Validation

Detail
Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does. When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, "boat" may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as "red" or "blue." Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs. This is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code's environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, denylists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright.

Effectiveness: High

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.)