CWE-241: Improper Handling of Unexpected Data Type
Improper Handling of Unexpected Data Type
Weakness ID: 241 (Weakness Base)
Status: Draft
Description
Description Summary
The software does not handle or incorrectly handles when a
particular element is not the expected type, e.g. it expects a digit (0-9) but
is provided with a letter (A-Z).
Anti-virus product has assert error when line
length is non-numeric.
Potential Mitigations
Phase
Description
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. Input (specifically, unexpected
CRLFs) that is not appropriate should not be processed into HTTP
headers.
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.