Only Filtering Special Elements at a Specified Location
Weakness ID: 795 (Weakness Base)Status: Incomplete
+ Description

Description Summary

The software receives data from an upstream component, but only accounts for special elements at a specified location, thereby missing remaining special elements that may exist before sending it to a downstream component.

Extended Description

A filter might only account for instances of special elements when they occur

  • 1) relative to a marker (e.g. "at the beginning/end of string; the second argument"), or

  • 2) at an absolute position (e.g. "byte number 10").

This may leave special elements in the data that did not match the filter position, but still may be dangerous.

+ Demonstrative Examples

Example 1

The following code takes untrusted input and uses a regular expression to filter a "../" element located at the beginning of the input string. It then appends this result to the /home/user/ directory and attempts to read the file in the final resulting path.

(Bad Code)
Example Language: Perl 
my $Username = GetUntrustedInput();
$Username =~ s/^\.\.\///;
my $filename = "/home/user/" . $Username;
ReadAndSendFile($filename);

Since the regular expression is only looking for an instance of "../" at the beginning of the string, it only removes the first "../" element. So an input value such as:

(Attack)
 
../../../etc/passwd

will have the first "../" stripped, resulting in:

(Result)
 
../../etc/passwd

This value is then concatenated with the /home/user/ directory:

(Result)
 
/home/user/../../etc/passwd

which causes the /etc/passwd file to be retrieved once the operating system has resolved the ../ sequences in the pathname. This leads to relative path traversal (CWE-22).

+ Relationships
NatureTypeIDNameView(s) this relationship pertains toView(s)
ChildOfWeakness BaseWeakness Base791Incomplete Filtering of Special Elements
Research Concepts (primary)1000
ParentOfWeakness VariantWeakness Variant796Only Filtering Special Elements Relative to a Marker
Research Concepts (primary)1000
ParentOfWeakness VariantWeakness Variant797Only Filtering Special Elements at an Absolute Position
Research Concepts (primary)1000
+ Content History
Submissions
Submission DateSubmitterOrganizationSource
2009-12-04MITREInternal CWE Team
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