COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONDraft

CWE-586

Explicit Call to Finalize()

The product makes an explicit call to the finalize() method from outside the finalizer.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product makes an explicit call to the finalize() method from outside the finalizer.

Extended description

While the Java Language Specification allows an object's finalize() method to be called from outside the finalizer, doing so is usually a bad idea. For example, calling finalize() explicitly means that finalize() will be called more than once: the first time will be the explicit call and the last time will be the call that is made after the object is garbage collected.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Unexpected StateQuality Degradation

Affected security scopes: Integrity, Other

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

Implementation

Implementation-phase defence

Detail
Do not make explicit calls to finalize().

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.)