COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONDraft

CWE-325

Missing Cryptographic Step

The product does not implement a required step in a cryptographic algorithm, resulting in weaker encryption than advertised by the algorithm.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product does not implement a required step in a cryptographic algorithm, resulting in weaker encryption than advertised by the algorithm.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Developers sometimes omit "expensive" (resource-intensive) steps in order to improve performance, especially in devices with limited memory or slower CPUs. This step may be taken under a mistaken impression that the step is unnecessary for the cryptographic algorithm.

Lifecycle phase

Requirements

This issue may happen when the requirements for the cryptographic algorithm are not clearly stated.

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Bypass Protection Mechanism

Affected security scopes: Access Control

Read Application DataModify Application Data

Affected security scopes: Confidentiality, Integrity

Hide Activities

Affected security scopes: Accountability, Non-Repudiation

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.)