CWE-754 对因果或异常条件的不恰当检查

Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions

结构: Simple

Abstraction: Class

状态: Incomplete

被利用可能性: Medium

基本描述

The software does not check or incorrectly checks for unusual or exceptional conditions that are not expected to occur frequently during day to day operation of the software.

扩展描述

The programmer may assume that certain events or conditions will never occur or do not need to be worried about, such as low memory conditions, lack of access to resources due to restrictive permissions, or misbehaving clients or components. However, attackers may intentionally trigger these unusual conditions, thus violating the programmer's assumptions, possibly introducing instability, incorrect behavior, or a vulnerability.

Note that this entry is not exclusively about the use of exceptions and exception handling, which are mechanisms for both checking and handling unusual or unexpected conditions.

相关缺陷

• cwe_Nature: ChildOf cwe_CWE_ID: 703 cwe_View_ID: 699 cwe_Ordinal: Primary

• cwe_Nature: ChildOf cwe_CWE_ID: 703 cwe_View_ID: 1000 cwe_Ordinal: Primary

适用平台

Language: {'cwe_Class': 'Language-Independent', 'cwe_Prevalence': 'Undetermined'}

常见的影响

检测方法

Automated Static Analysis

DM-12 Manual Dynamic Analysis

可能的缓解方案

MIT-3 Requirements

策略: Language Selection

Use a language that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid. Choose languages with features such as exception handling that force the programmer to anticipate unusual conditions that may generate exceptions. Custom exceptions may need to be developed to handle unusual business-logic conditions. Be careful not to pass sensitive exceptions back to the user (CWE-209, CWE-248).

Implementation

策略:

Check the results of all functions that return a value and verify that the value is expected.

Implementation

策略:

If using exception handling, catch and throw specific exceptions instead of overly-general exceptions (CWE-396, CWE-397). Catch and handle exceptions as locally as possible so that exceptions do not propagate too far up the call stack (CWE-705). Avoid unchecked or uncaught exceptions where feasible (CWE-248).

MIT-39 Implementation

策略:

Ensure that error messages only contain minimal details that are useful to the intended audience, and nobody else. The messages need to strike the balance between being too cryptic and not being cryptic enough. They should not necessarily reveal the methods that were used to determine the error. Such detailed information can be used to refine the original attack to increase the chances of success. If errors must be tracked in some detail, capture them in log messages - but consider what could occur if the log messages can be viewed by attackers. Avoid recording highly sensitive information such as passwords in any form. Avoid inconsistent messaging that might accidentally tip off an attacker about internal state, such as whether a username is valid or not. Exposing additional information to a potential attacker in the context of an exceptional condition can help the attacker determine what attack vectors are most likely to succeed beyond DoS.

MIT-5 Implementation

策略: Input Validation

Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a whitelist of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does. When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, "boat" may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as "red" or "blue." Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs (i.e., do not rely on a blacklist). A blacklist is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code's environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, blacklists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright.

MIT-38 ['Architecture and Design', 'Implementation']

策略:

If the program must fail, ensure that it fails gracefully (fails closed). There may be a temptation to simply let the program fail poorly in cases such as low memory conditions, but an attacker may be able to assert control before the software has fully exited. Alternately, an uncontrolled failure could cause cascading problems with other downstream components; for example, the program could send a signal to a downstream process so the process immediately knows that a problem has occurred and has a better chance of recovery.

Architecture and Design

策略:

Use system limits, which should help to prevent resource exhaustion. However, the software should still handle low resource conditions since they may still occur.

示例代码

例

Consider the following code segment:

bad C

The programmer expects that when fgets() returns, buf will contain a null-terminated string of length 9 or less. But if an I/O error occurs, fgets() will not null-terminate buf. Furthermore, if the end of the file is reached before any characters are read, fgets() returns without writing anything to buf. In both of these situations, fgets() signals that something unusual has happened by returning NULL, but in this code, the warning will not be noticed. The lack of a null terminator in buf can result in a buffer overflow in the subsequent call to strcpy().

例

The following code does not check to see if memory allocation succeeded before attempting to use the pointer returned by malloc().

bad C

The traditional defense of this coding error is: "If my program runs out of memory, it will fail. It doesn't matter whether I handle the error or simply allow the program to die with a segmentation fault when it tries to dereference the null pointer." This argument ignores three important considerations:

None

例

The following examples read a file into a byte array.

bad C#

bad Java

The code loops through a set of users, reading a private data file for each user. The programmer assumes that the files are always 1 kilobyte in size and therefore ignores the return value from Read(). If an attacker can create a smaller file, the program will recycle the remainder of the data from the previous user and treat it as though it belongs to the attacker.

例

The following code does not check to see if the string returned by getParameter() is null before calling the member function compareTo(), potentially causing a NULL dereference.

bad Java

The following code does not check to see if the string returned by the Item property is null before calling the member function Equals(), potentially causing a NULL dereference.

bad Java

The traditional defense of this coding error is: "I know the requested value will always exist because.... If it does not exist, the program cannot perform the desired behavior so it doesn't matter whether I handle the error or simply allow the program to die dereferencing a null value." But attackers are skilled at finding unexpected paths through programs, particularly when exceptions are involved.

例

The following code shows a system property that is set to null and later dereferenced by a programmer who mistakenly assumes it will always be defined.

bad Java

The traditional defense of this coding error is: "I know the requested value will always exist because.... If it does not exist, the program cannot perform the desired behavior so it doesn't matter whether I handle the error or simply allow the program to die dereferencing a null value." But attackers are skilled at finding unexpected paths through programs, particularly when exceptions are involved.

例

The following VB.NET code does not check to make sure that it has read 50 bytes from myfile.txt. This can cause DoDangerousOperation() to operate on an unexpected value.

bad C#

In .NET, it is not uncommon for programmers to misunderstand Read() and related methods that are part of many System.IO classes. The stream and reader classes do not consider it to be unusual or exceptional if only a small amount of data becomes available. These classes simply add the small amount of data to the return buffer, and set the return value to the number of bytes or characters read. There is no guarantee that the amount of data returned is equal to the amount of data requested.

例

This example takes an IP address from a user, verifies that it is well formed and then looks up the hostname and copies it into a buffer.

bad C

If an attacker provides an address that appears to be well-formed, but the address does not resolve to a hostname, then the call to gethostbyaddr() will return NULL. When this occurs, a NULL pointer dereference (CWE-476) will occur in the call to strcpy().

Note that this example is also vulnerable to a buffer overflow (see CWE-119).

例

In the following C/C++ example the method outputStringToFile opens a file in the local filesystem and outputs a string to the file. The input parameters output and filename contain the string to output to the file and the name of the file respectively.

bad C++

However, this code does not check the return values of the methods openFileToWrite, writeToFile, closeFile to verify that the file was properly opened and closed and that the string was successfully written to the file. The return values for these methods should be checked to determine if the method was successful and allow for detection of errors or unexpected conditions as in the following example.

good C++

例

In the following Java example the method readFromFile uses a FileReader object to read the contents of a file. The FileReader object is created using the File object readFile, the readFile object is initialized using the setInputFile method. The setInputFile method should be called before calling the readFromFile method.

bad Java

However, the readFromFile method does not check to see if the readFile object is null, i.e. has not been initialized, before creating the FileReader object and reading from the input file. The readFromFile method should verify whether the readFile object is null and output an error message and raise an exception if the readFile object is null, as in the following code.

good Java

分析过的案例

Notes

分类映射

引用

• REF-62 The Art of Software Security Assessment

• REF-62 The Art of Software Security Assessment

• REF-44 24 Deadly Sins of Software Security

• REF-622 Top 25 Series - Rank 15 - Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions