COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONDraft

CWE-456

Missing Initialization of a Variable

The product does not initialize critical variables, which causes the execution environment to use unexpected values.

Abstraction

Variant

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product does not initialize critical variables, which causes the execution environment to use unexpected values.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Unexpected StateQuality DegradationVaries by Context

Affected security scopes: Integrity, Other

The uninitialized data may be invalid, causing logic errors within the program. In some cases, this could result in a security problem.

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

Implementation

Attack Surface Reduction

Detail
Ensure that critical variables are initialized before first use [REF-1485].

Requirements

Language Selection

Detail
Choose a language that is not susceptible to these issues.

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.)