Weakness · Medium

CWE-1024: Comparison of Incompatible Types

What it is

The product performs a comparison between two entities, but the entities are of different, incompatible types that cannot be guaranteed to provide correct results when they are directly compared.

MITRE CWE 4.19.1

Severity (our rating)
Medium
Likelihood of exploit
Not rated by MITRE
Introduced during
Implementation
Exploited in the wild
No CVE in CISA's catalog

What an attacker can do

  • Varies by Context (Other)

How to prevent it

Testing

  • Thoroughly test the comparison scheme before deploying code into production. Perform positive testing as well as negative testing.

How to find it

  • 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.)

CWE-1024 on MITRE's CWE site

H2 Security

Found it in your code?

We review where it appears, fix it with your team, and check it was not already used against you.

Talk to our team

T Academy

Stop writing it in the first place

Learn to build software and systems without weaknesses like this one, with practice on real hosts in your browser, every objective checked on the machine.

Start free

Source: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.