VariantIncomplete

CWE-161Improper Neutralization of Multiple Leading Special Elements

Category: other

Description

The product receives input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes multiple leading special elements that could be interpreted in unexpected ways when they are sent to a downstream component. As data is parsed, improperly handled multiple leading special elements may cause the process to take unexpected actions that result in an attack.

Common consequences· 1

  • Integrity — Unexpected State

Potential mitigations· 4

  • []Developers should anticipate that multiple leading special elements will be injected/removed/manipulated in the input vectors of their product. Use an appropriate combination of denylists and allowlists to ensure only valid, expected and appropriate input is processed by the system.
  • [Implementation]
  • [Implementation]While it is risky to use dynamically-generated query strings, code, or commands that mix control and data together, sometimes it may be unavoidable. Properly quote arguments and escape any special characters within those arguments. The most conservative approach is to escape or filter all characters that do not pass an extremely strict allowlist (such as everything that is not alphanumeric or white space). If some special characters are still needed, such as white space, wrap each argument in quotes after the escaping/filtering step. Be careful of argument injection (CWE-88).
  • [Implementation]Inputs should be decoded and canonicalized to the application's current internal representation before being validated (CWE-180). Make sure that the application does not decode the same input twice (CWE-174). Such errors could be used to bypass allowlist validation schemes by introducing dangerous inputs after they have been checked.

References

  1. https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/161.html

Related by meaning· 6

Nearest entities by semantic similarity across the cs-graph corpus.

CWE
Improper Neutralization of Leading Special Elements
CWE
Improper Neutralization of Multiple Trailing Special Elements
CWE
Improper Neutralization of Multiple Internal Special Elements
CWE
Improper Neutralization of Trailing Special Elements
CWE
Improper Neutralization of Internal Special Elements
CWE
Improper Neutralization of Wildcards or Matching Symbols
Sourced from MITRE CWE 4.20. Curated for EU compliance use cases by Adam Lundqvist, Founder at SQUR.