CWE

Common Weakness Enumeration

A community-developed list of SW & HW weaknesses that can become vulnerabilities

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ID

CWE CATEGORY: 7PK - Errors

Category ID: 388
Vulnerability Mapping: PROHIBITED This CWE ID must not be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities
+ Summary
This category represents one of the phyla in the Seven Pernicious Kingdoms vulnerability classification. It includes weaknesses that occur when an application does not properly handle errors that occur during processing. According to the authors of the Seven Pernicious Kingdoms, "Errors and error handling represent a class of API. Errors related to error handling are so common that they deserve a special kingdom of their own. As with 'API Abuse,' there are two ways to introduce an error-related security vulnerability: the most common one is handling errors poorly (or not at all). The second is producing errors that either give out too much information (to possible attackers) or are difficult to handle."
+ Membership
Nature Type ID Name
MemberOf ViewView - a subset of CWE entries that provides a way of examining CWE content. The two main view structures are Slices (flat lists) and Graphs (containing relationships between entries). 700 Seven Pernicious Kingdoms
HasMember BaseBase - 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. 391 Unchecked Error Condition
HasMember BaseBase - 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. 395 Use of NullPointerException Catch to Detect NULL Pointer Dereference
HasMember BaseBase - 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. 396 Declaration of Catch for Generic Exception
HasMember BaseBase - 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. 397 Declaration of Throws for Generic Exception
+ Vulnerability Mapping Notes

Usage: PROHIBITED

(this CWE ID must not be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities)

Reason: Category

Rationale:

This entry is a Category. Using categories for mapping has been discouraged since 2019. Categories are informal organizational groupings of weaknesses that can help CWE users with data aggregation, navigation, and browsing. However, they are not weaknesses in themselves.

Comments:

Consider mapping to weaknesses that are members of this Category.
+ References
[REF-6] Katrina Tsipenyuk, Brian Chess and Gary McGraw. "Seven Pernicious Kingdoms: A Taxonomy of Software Security Errors". NIST Workshop on Software Security Assurance Tools Techniques and Metrics. NIST. 2005-11-07. <https://samate.nist.gov/SSATTM_Content/papers/Seven%20Pernicious%20Kingdoms%20-%20Taxonomy%20of%20Sw%20Security%20Errors%20-%20Tsipenyuk%20-%20Chess%20-%20McGraw.pdf>.
+ Content History
+ Submissions
Submission Date Submitter Organization
2006-07-19
(CWE Draft 3, 2006-07-19)
7 Pernicious Kingdoms
+ Modifications
Modification Date Modifier Organization
2008-07-01 Sean Eidemiller Cigital
added/updated demonstrative examples
2008-09-08 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Common_Consequences, Description, Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
2008-10-14 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Description
2009-03-10 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2009-10-29 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Common_Consequences
2010-02-16 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2010-04-05 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Related_Attack_Patterns
2011-06-01 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Common_Consequences
2012-05-11 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated References
2015-12-07 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2017-01-19 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2017-11-08 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Common_Consequences, Demonstrative_Examples, Description, Name, Potential_Mitigations, References, Related_Attack_Patterns, Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
2018-03-27 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2020-02-24 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated References
2023-06-29 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Mapping_Notes
+ Previous Entry Names
Change Date Previous Entry Name
2017-11-08 Error Handling
Page Last Updated: November 19, 2024