Improper Input Validation

Rule ID

MI101

Definition

The software receives input or data, but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the input has the properties that are required to process the data safely and correctly.

Example

See one of the applicable code examples from CWE.

#define MAX_DIM 100
/* board dimensions */

int m,n, error;
board_square_t *board;
printf("Please specify the board height: \n");
error = scanf("%d", &m);
if ( EOF == error ){
  die("No integer passed: Die evil hacker!\n");
}
printf("Please specify the board width: \n");
error = scanf("%d", &n);
if ( EOF == error ){
  die("No integer passed: Die evil hacker!\n");
}
if ( m > MAX_DIM || n > MAX_DIM ) {
  die("Value too large: Die evil hacker!\n");
}
board = (board_square_t*) malloc( m * n * sizeof(board_square_t));

While this code checks to make sure the user cannot specify large, positive integers and consume too much memory, it does not check for negative values supplied by the user. As a result, an attacker can perform a resource consumption (CWE-400) attack against this program by specifying two, large negative values that will not overflow, resulting in a very large memory allocation (CWE-789) and possibly a system crash. Alternatively, an attacker can provide very large negative values which will cause an integer overflow (CWE-190) and unexpected behavior will follow depending on how the values are treated in the remainder of the program.

References

• Common Weakness Enumeration: CWE-20