COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONDraft

CWE-248

Uncaught Exception

An exception is thrown from a function, but it is not caught.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

An exception is thrown from a function, but it is not caught.

Extended description

When an exception is not caught, it may cause the program to crash or expose sensitive information.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

DoS: Crash, Exit, or RestartRead Application Data

Affected security scopes: Availability, Confidentiality

An uncaught exception could cause the system to be placed in a state that could lead to a crash, exposure of sensitive information or other unintended behaviors.

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.)