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Home > CWE List > CWE-687: Function Call With Incorrectly Specified Argument Value (4.16)  
ID

CWE-687: Function Call With Incorrectly Specified Argument Value

Weakness ID: 687
Vulnerability Mapping: ALLOWED This CWE ID may be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities
Abstraction: Variant Variant - 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 calls a function, procedure, or routine, but the caller specifies an argument that contains the wrong value, which may lead to resultant weaknesses.
+ 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.
Scope Impact Likelihood
Other

Technical Impact: Quality Degradation

+ Relationships
Section Help This 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)
Nature Type ID Name
ChildOf Base Base - 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. 628 Function Call with Incorrectly Specified Arguments
ParentOf Variant Variant - 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. 560 Use of umask() with chmod-style Argument
+ 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.
Phase Note
Implementation
+ Demonstrative Examples

Example 1

This Perl code intends to record whether a user authenticated successfully or not, and to exit if the user fails to authenticate. However, when it calls ReportAuth(), the third argument is specified as 0 instead of 1, so it does not exit.

(bad code)
Example Language: Perl 
sub ReportAuth {
my ($username, $result, $fatal) = @_;
PrintLog("auth: username=%s, result=%d", $username, $result);
if (($result ne "success") && $fatal) {
die "Failed!\n";
}
}

sub PrivilegedFunc
{
my $result = CheckAuth($username);
ReportAuth($username, $result, 0);
DoReallyImportantStuff();
}

+ Weakness Ordinalities
Ordinality Description
Primary
(where the weakness exists independent of other weaknesses)
+ Detection Methods

Manual Static Analysis

This might require an understanding of intended program behavior or design to determine whether the value is incorrect.
+ 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.
Nature Type ID Name
MemberOf CategoryCategory - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic. 742 CERT C Secure Coding Standard (2008) Chapter 9 - Memory Management (MEM)
MemberOf CategoryCategory - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic. 876 CERT C++ Secure Coding Section 08 - Memory Management (MEM)
MemberOf CategoryCategory - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic. 990 SFP Secondary Cluster: Tainted Input to Command
MemberOf CategoryCategory - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic. 1412 Comprehensive Categorization: Poor Coding Practices
+ Vulnerability Mapping Notes

Usage: ALLOWED

(this CWE ID may 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.
+ Notes

Relationship

When primary, this weakness is most likely to occur in rarely-tested code, since the wrong value can change the semantic meaning of the program's execution and lead to obviously-incorrect behavior. It can also be resultant from issues in which the program assigns the wrong value to a variable, and that variable is later used in a function call. In that sense, this issue could be argued as having chaining relationships with many implementation errors in CWE.
+ Taxonomy Mappings
Mapped Taxonomy Name Node ID Fit Mapped Node Name
CERT C Secure Coding MEM04-C Do not perform zero length allocations
Software Fault Patterns SFP24 Tainted input to command
+ Content History
+ Submissions
Submission Date Submitter Organization
2008-04-11
(CWE Draft 9, 2008-04-11)
CWE Content Team MITRE
+ Modifications
Modification Date Modifier Organization
2008-07-01 Eric Dalci Cigital
updated Potential_Mitigations
2008-09-08 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Detection_Factors, Relationships, Other_Notes, Weakness_Ordinalities
2008-11-24 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
2009-05-27 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Description
2009-10-29 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Other_Notes, Relationship_Notes
2010-02-16 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Detection_Factors
2011-06-01 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Common_Consequences
2011-06-27 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Common_Consequences
2011-09-13 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
2012-05-11 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Demonstrative_Examples, Relationships
2012-10-30 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Potential_Mitigations
2014-07-30 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2017-11-08 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Taxonomy_Mappings
2020-02-24 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
2021-03-15 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2023-01-31 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Description
2023-04-27 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2023-06-29 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Mapping_Notes
Page Last Updated: November 19, 2024