CWE-1254: Incorrect Comparison Logic Granularity | Glexia
CWE-1254 (Incorrect Comparison Logic Granularity) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK context.
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-1254: Incorrect Comparison Logic Granularity
Incorrect Comparison Logic Granularity represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Confidentiality Authorization: Bypass Protection Mechanism
Developer Pattern
CWE-1254 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-1254, 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-1254: Incorrect Comparison Logic Granularity
The product's comparison logic is performed over a series of steps rather than across the entire string in one operation. If there is a comparison logic failure on one of these steps, the operation may be vulnerable to a timing attack that can result in the interception of the process for nefarious purposes.
Comparison logic is used to compare a variety of objects including passwords, Message Authentication Codes (MACs), and responses to verification challenges. When comparison logic is implemented at a finer granularity (e.g., byte-by-byte comparison) and breaks in the case of a comparison failure, an attacker can exploit this implementation to identify when exactly the failure occurred. With multiple attempts, the attacker may be able to guesses the correct password/response to challenge and elevate their privileges.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- Missing validation
- Unsafe defaults
- Insufficient authorization or memory-safety invariant
Remediation
- Implementation: The hardware designer should ensure that comparison logic is implemented so as to compare in one operation instead in smaller chunks.
Detection
- Code review
- SAST
- DAST
- Focused regression tests
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
Related CWEs
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.