Weakness · Medium
CWE-1164: Irrelevant Code
What it is
The product contains code that is not essential for execution, i.e. makes no state changes and has no side effects that alter data or control flow, such that removal of the code would have no impact to functionality or correctness.
- Severity (our rating)
- Medium
- Likelihood of exploit
- Not rated by MITRE
- Introduced during
- Implementation
- Exploited in the wild
- No CVE in CISA's catalog
In more detail
Irrelevant code could include dead code, initialization that is not used, empty blocks, code that could be entirely removed due to optimization, etc.
What an attacker can do
- Reduce Reliability (Other)
- Reduce Performance (Other)
How to prevent it
MITRE lists no specific mitigation for this weakness. Treat it like its parent weaknesses below: validate input, keep the design simple and review the code where it could appear.
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.)
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Start freeSource: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.