Failure to Sanitize Expression/Command Delimiters
Weakness ID: 146 (Weakness Variant)Status: Incomplete
+ Description

Description Summary

Delimiters between expressions or commands injected into the software through input can be used to compromise a system.

Extended Description

As data is parsed, an injected/absent/malformed delimiter may cause the process to take unexpected actions that result in an attack.

+ Time of Introduction
  • Implementation
+ Applicable Platforms

Languages

All

+ Potential Mitigations

Developers should anticipate that inter-expression and inter-command delimiters will be injected/removed/manipulated in the input vectors of their software system.

Phase: Architecture and Design

Assume all input is malicious. Use a standard input validation mechanism to validate all input for length, type, syntax, and business rules before accepting the data to be displayed or stored. Use an "accept known good" validation strategy.

Use and specify a strong output encoding (such as ISO 8859-1 or UTF 8).

Do not rely exclusively on blacklist validation to detect malicious input or to encode output. There are too many variants to encode a character; you're likely to miss some variants.

Inputs should be decoded and canonicalized to the application's current internal representation before being validated. Make sure that your application does not decode the same input twice. Such errors could be used to bypass whitelist schemes by introducing dangerous inputs after they have been checked.

+ Relationships
NatureTypeIDNameView(s) this relationship pertains toView(s)
ChildOfWeakness BaseWeakness Base140Failure to Sanitize Delimiters
Development Concepts (primary)699
Research Concepts (primary)1000
+ Relationship Notes

A shell metacharacter (covered in CWE-150) is one example of a potential delimiter that may need to be sanitized.

+ Taxonomy Mappings
Mapped Taxonomy NameNode IDFitMapped Node Name
PLOVERDelimiter between Expressions or Commands
+ Related Attack Patterns
CAPEC-IDAttack Pattern Name
(CAPEC Version: 1.4)
15Command Delimiters
6Argument Injection
+ Content History
Submissions
Submission DateSubmitterOrganizationSource
PLOVERExternally Mined
Modifications
Modification DateModifierOrganizationSource
2008-07-01Eric DalciCigitalExternal
updated Potential Mitigations, Time of Introduction
2008-09-08CWE Content TeamMITREInternal
updated Relationships, Other Notes, Taxonomy Mappings
2008-10-14CWE Content TeamMITREInternal
updated Description
2009-07-27CWE Content TeamMITREInternal
updated Potential Mitigations
2009-10-29CWE Content TeamMITREInternal
updated Other Notes, Relationship Notes
Previous Entry Names
Change DatePrevious Entry Name
2008-04-11Delimiter between Expressions or Commands