Weakness · Medium
CWE-246: J2EE Bad Practices: Direct Use of Sockets
What it is
The J2EE application directly uses sockets instead of using framework method calls.
- 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
The J2EE standard permits the use of sockets only for the purpose of communication with legacy systems when no higher-level protocol is available. Authoring your own communication protocol requires wrestling with difficult security issues. Without significant scrutiny by a security expert, chances are good that a custom communication protocol will suffer from security problems. Many of the same issues apply to a custom implementation of a standard protocol. While there are usually more resources available that address security concerns related to implementing a standard protocol, these resources are also available to attackers.
What an attacker can do
- Quality Degradation (Other)
How to prevent it
Architecture and Design
- Use framework method calls instead of using sockets directly.
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.)
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.