CWE-684: Incorrect Provision of Specified Functionality | Glexia
CWE-684 (Incorrect Provision of Specified Functionality) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK context.
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-684: Incorrect Provision of Specified Functionality
Incorrect Provision of Specified Functionality represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Other: Quality Degradation
Developer Pattern
CWE-684 is the kind of defect developers can usually prevent with explicit validation, safer framework defaults, and tests that exercise hostile input or unsafe state transitions.
Automation confidence
high confidence from CWE-684, 4.20.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Official CWE Definition
CWE-684: Incorrect Provision of Specified Functionality
The code does not function according to its published specifications, potentially leading to incorrect usage.
When providing functionality to an external party, it is important that the product behaves in accordance with the details specified. When requirements of nuances are not documented, the functionality may produce unintended behaviors for the caller, possibly leading to an exploitable state.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- In the following snippet from a doPost() servlet method, the server returns "200 OK" (default) even if an error occurs.
- In the following example, an HTTP 404 status code is returned in the event of an IOException encountered in a Java servlet. A 404 code is typically meant to indicate a non-existent resource and would be somewhat misleading in this case.
Remediation
- Implementation: Ensure that your code strictly conforms to specifications.
Detection
- Code review
- SAST
- DAST
- Focused regression tests
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
Related CWEs
- CWE-1245: Improper Finite State Machines (FSMs) in Hardware Logic
- CWE-1434: Insecure Setting of Generative AI/ML Model Inference Parameters
- CWE-392: Missing Report of Error Condition
- CWE-393: Return of Wrong Status Code
- CWE-440: Expected Behavior Violation
- CWE-446: UI Discrepancy for Security Feature
- CWE-451: User Interface (UI) Misrepresentation of Critical Information
- CWE-710: Improper Adherence to Coding Standards
- CWE-912: Hidden Functionality
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.