Are you a dangerous programmer?

Davey Winder
Wednesday, 14 January 2009 02:06

Your IT - Home IT

For the full breakdown and detailed descriptions you need to head over to the CWE/SANS site itself, which is broken down into three main categories: Insecure Interaction Between Components, Risky Resource Management and Porous Defenses.

Within these categories you will find multiple entries that combine to make up that top 25 list. Here is just a very brief overview.

The Insecure Interaction Between Components section covers weaknesses related to the way data is sent and received, including:

Improper Input Validation, Improper Encoding or Escaping of Output, Failure to Preserve SQL Query Structure, Failure to Preserve Web Page Structure, Failure to Preserve OS Command Structure, Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information, Cross-Site Request Forgery, Race Condition and Error Message Information Leaks.

Risky Resource Management, meanwhile, covers errors relating to software not managing system resource creation, usage, transfer or destruction properly, including:

Failure to Constrain Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer, External Control of Critical State Data, External Control of File Name or Path, Untrusted Search Path, Failure to Control Generation of Code, Download of Code Without Integrity Check, Improper Resource Shutdown or Release, Improper Initialization and Incorrect Calculation.

Finally, Porous Defenses deals with the misuse and abuse of defensive techniques such as:

Improper Access Control, Use of a Broken or Risky Cryptographic Algorithm, Hard-Coded Password, Insecure Permission Assignment for Critical Resource, Use of Insufficiently Random Values, Execution with Unnecessary Privileges, Client-Side Enforcement of Server-Side Security.