CWE-637

Unnecessary Complexity in Protection Mechanism (Not Using 'Economy of Mechanism')

Medium

Description

The product uses a more complex mechanism than necessary, which could lead to resultant weaknesses when the mechanism is not correctly understood, modeled, configured, implemented, or used.

Potential Impact

How to Fix

Architecture and Design

Avoid complex security mechanisms when simpler ones would meet requirements. Avoid complex data models, and unnecessarily complex operations. Adopt architectures that provide guarantees, simplify understanding through elegance and abstraction, and that can be implemented similarly. Modularize, isolate and do not trust complex code, and apply other secure programming principles on these modules (e.g., least privilege) to mitigate vulnerabilities.

Related Weaknesses

References

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