Weakness · Medium
CWE-130: Improper Handling of Length Parameter Inconsistency
What it is
The product parses a formatted message or structure, but it does not handle or incorrectly handles a length field that is inconsistent with the actual length of the associated data.
- Severity (our rating)
- Medium
- Likelihood of exploit
- Not rated by MITRE
- Introduced during
- Implementation
- Exploited in the wild
- 1 known exploited CVE
In more detail
If an attacker can manipulate the length parameter associated with an input such that it is inconsistent with the actual length of the input, this can be leveraged to cause the target application to behave in unexpected, and possibly, malicious ways. One of the possible motives for doing so is to pass in arbitrarily large input to the application. Another possible motivation is the modification of application state by including invalid data for subsequent properties of the application. Such weaknesses commonly lead to attacks such as buffer overflows and execution of arbitrary code.
What an attacker can do
- Read Memory (Confidentiality, Integrity)
- Modify Memory (Confidentiality, Integrity)
- Varies by Context (Confidentiality, Integrity)
How to prevent it
Implementation
- When processing structured incoming data containing a size field followed by raw data, ensure that you identify and resolve any inconsistencies between the size field and the actual size of the data.
- Do not let the user control the size of the buffer.
- Validate that the length of the user-supplied data is consistent with the buffer size.
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.)
Exploited in the wild: 1 CVE
Vulnerabilities caused by CWE-130 that attackers have used, from CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, newest first.
H2 Security
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Start freeSource: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.