Weakness · High
CWE-500: Public Static Field Not Marked Final
What it is
An object contains a public static field that is not marked final, which might allow it to be modified in unexpected ways.
- Severity (our rating)
- High
- Likelihood of exploit
- High
- Introduced during
- Implementation
- Exploited in the wild
- No CVE in CISA's catalog
In more detail
Public static variables can be read without an accessor and changed without a mutator by any classes in the application.
What an attacker can do
- Modify Application Data (Integrity)
- Read Application Data (Confidentiality)
How to prevent it
Architecture and Design
- Clearly identify the scope for all critical data elements, including whether they should be regarded as static.
Implementation
- Make any static fields private and constant. A constant field is denoted by the keyword 'const' in C/C++ and ' final' in Java
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.