CWE-249: DEPRECATED: Often Misused: Path Manipulation

In more detail

This entry was deprecated for several reasons. The primary reason is over-loading of the "path manipulation" term and the description. The original description for this entry was the same as that for the "Often Misused: File System" item in the original Seven Pernicious Kingdoms paper. However, Seven Pernicious Kingdoms also has a "Path Manipulation" phrase that is for external control of pathnames (CWE-73), which is a factor in symbolic link following and path traversal, neither of which is explicitly mentioned in 7PK. Fortify uses the phrase "Often Misused: Path Manipulation" for a broader range of problems, generally for issues related to buffer management. Given the multiple conflicting uses of this term, there is a chance that CWE users may have incorrectly mapped to this entry. The second reason for deprecation is an implied combination of multiple weaknesses within buffer-handling functions. The focus of this entry was generally on the path-conversion functions and their association with buffer overflows. However, some of Fortify's Vulncat entries have the term "path manipulation" but describe a non-overflow weakness in which the buffer is not guaranteed to contain the entire pathname, i.e., there is information truncation (see CWE-222 for a similar concept). A new entry for this non-overflow weakness may be created in a future version of CWE.

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.

CWE-249 on MITRE's CWE site