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Common Weakness Enumeration

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Home > CWE List > CWE- Individual Dictionary Definition (4.14)  
ID

CWE-777: Regular Expression without Anchors

Weakness ID: 777
Vulnerability Mapping: ALLOWEDThis CWE ID may be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities
Abstraction: VariantVariant - a weakness that is linked to a certain type of product, typically involving a specific language or technology. More specific than a Base weakness. Variant level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 3 to 5 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.
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+ Description
The product uses a regular expression to perform neutralization, but the regular expression is not anchored and may allow malicious or malformed data to slip through.
+ Extended Description
When performing tasks such as validating against a set of allowed inputs (allowlist), data is examined and possibly modified to ensure that it is well-formed and adheres to a list of safe values. If the regular expression is not anchored, malicious or malformed data may be included before or after any string matching the regular expression. The type of malicious data that is allowed will depend on the context of the application and which anchors are omitted from the regular expression.
+ Relationships
Section HelpThis table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined as ChildOf, ParentOf, MemberOf and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as PeerOf and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar weaknesses that the user may want to explore.
+ Relevant to the view "Research Concepts" (CWE-1000)
NatureTypeIDName
ChildOfBaseBase - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.625Permissive Regular Expression
+ Background Details
Regular expressions are typically used to match a pattern of text. Anchors are used in regular expressions to specify where the pattern should match: at the beginning, the end, or both (the whole input).
+ Modes Of Introduction
Section HelpThe different Modes of Introduction provide information about how and when this weakness may be introduced. The Phase identifies a point in the life cycle at which introduction may occur, while the Note provides a typical scenario related to introduction during the given phase.
PhaseNote
Implementation
+ Common Consequences
Section HelpThis table specifies different individual consequences associated with the weakness. The Scope identifies the application security area that is violated, while the Impact describes the negative technical impact that arises if an adversary succeeds in exploiting this weakness. The Likelihood provides information about how likely the specific consequence is expected to be seen relative to the other consequences in the list. For example, there may be high likelihood that a weakness will be exploited to achieve a certain impact, but a low likelihood that it will be exploited to achieve a different impact.
ScopeImpactLikelihood
Availability
Confidentiality
Access Control

Technical Impact: Bypass Protection Mechanism

An unanchored regular expression in the context of an allowlist will possibly result in a protection mechanism failure, allowing malicious or malformed data to enter trusted regions of the program. The specific consequences will depend on what functionality the allowlist was protecting.
+ Likelihood Of Exploit
Medium
+ Demonstrative Examples

Example 1

Consider a web application that supports multiple languages. It selects messages for an appropriate language by using the lang parameter.

(bad code)
Example Language: PHP 
$dir = "/home/cwe/languages";
$lang = $_GET['lang'];
if (preg_match("/[A-Za-z0-9]+/", $lang)) {
include("$dir/$lang");
}
else {
echo "You shall not pass!\n";
}

The previous code attempts to match only alphanumeric values so that language values such as "english" and "french" are valid while also protecting against path traversal, CWE-22. However, the regular expression anchors are omitted, so any text containing at least one alphanumeric character will now pass the validation step. For example, the attack string below will match the regular expression.

(attack code)
 
../../etc/passwd

If the attacker can inject code sequences into a file, such as the web server's HTTP request log, then the attacker may be able to redirect the lang parameter to the log file and execute arbitrary code.

Example 2

This code uses a regular expression to validate an IP string prior to using it in a call to the "ping" command.

(bad code)
Example Language: Python 
import subprocess
import re

def validate_ip_regex(ip: str):
ip_validator = re.compile(r"((25[0-5]|(2[0-4]|1\d|[1-9]|)\d)\.?\b){4}")
if ip_validator.match(ip):
return ip
else:
raise ValueError("IP address does not match valid pattern.")

def run_ping_regex(ip: str):
validated = validate_ip_regex(ip)
# The ping command treats zero-prepended IP addresses as octal
result = subprocess.call(["ping", validated])
print(result)

Since the regular expression does not have anchors (CWE-777), i.e. is unbounded without ^ or $ characters, then prepending a 0 or 0x to the beginning of the IP address will still result in a matched regex pattern. Since the ping command supports octal and hex prepended IP addresses, it will use the unexpectedly valid IP address (CWE-1389). For example, "0x63.63.63.63" would be considered equivalent to "99.63.63.63". As a result, the attacker could potentially ping systems that the attacker cannot reach directly.

+ Observed Examples
ReferenceDescription
Chain: Web UI for a Python RPC framework does not use regex anchors to validate user login emails (CWE-777), potentially allowing bypass of OAuth (CWE-1390).
+ Potential Mitigations

Phase: Implementation

Be sure to understand both what will be matched and what will not be matched by a regular expression. Anchoring the ends of the expression will allow the programmer to define an allowlist strictly limited to what is matched by the text in the regular expression. If you are using a package that only matches one line by default, ensure that you can match multi-line inputs if necessary.
+ Memberships
Section HelpThis MemberOf Relationships table shows additional CWE Categories and Views that reference this weakness as a member. This information is often useful in understanding where a weakness fits within the context of external information sources.
NatureTypeIDName
MemberOfCategoryCategory - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.1397Comprehensive Categorization: Comparison
+ Vulnerability Mapping Notes

Usage: ALLOWED

(this CWE ID could be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities)

Reason: Acceptable-Use

Rationale:

This CWE entry is at the Variant level of abstraction, which is a preferred level of abstraction for mapping to the root causes of vulnerabilities.

Comments:

Carefully read both the name and description to ensure that this mapping is an appropriate fit. Do not try to 'force' a mapping to a lower-level Base/Variant simply to comply with this preferred level of abstraction.
+ Content History
+ Submissions
Submission DateSubmitterOrganization
2009-06-30
(CWE 1.5, 2009-07-27)
CWE Content TeamMITRE
+ Modifications
Modification DateModifierOrganization
2010-06-21CWE Content TeamMITRE
updated Description
2011-06-01CWE Content TeamMITRE
updated Common_Consequences
2017-11-08CWE Content TeamMITRE
updated Likelihood_of_Exploit
2020-02-24CWE Content TeamMITRE
updated Relationships
2020-06-25CWE Content TeamMITRE
updated Common_Consequences, Description, Potential_Mitigations
2022-10-13CWE Content TeamMITRE
updated Demonstrative_Examples, Observed_Examples
2023-01-31CWE Content TeamMITRE
updated Description
2023-04-27CWE Content TeamMITRE
updated Relationships
2023-06-29CWE Content TeamMITRE
updated Mapping_Notes
Page Last Updated: February 29, 2024