COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONDraft

CWE-346

Origin Validation Error

The product does not properly verify that the source of data or communication is valid.

Abstraction

Class

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product does not properly verify that the source of data or communication is valid.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Architecture and Design

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

REALIZATION: This weakness is caused during implementation of an architectural security tactic.

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Gain Privileges or Assume IdentityVaries by Context

Affected security scopes: Access Control, Other

An attacker can access any functionality that is inadvertently accessible to the source.

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.)