CWE-1471: Insufficiently Controlled Parser Differential | Glexia
CWE-1471 (Insufficiently Controlled Parser Differential) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK context.
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-1471: Insufficiently Controlled Parser Differential
Insufficiently Controlled Parser Differential represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Integrity Authorization Access Control: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity Bypass Protection Mechanism Hide Activities Alter Execution Logic Unexpected State Varies by Context: If an input is analyzed and/or processed by multiple components in security-related situations - such as analyzing headers or comparing identifiers - then a parser differential could lead to incorrect security decisions.
Developer Pattern
CWE-1471 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-1471, 4.21.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Official CWE Definition
CWE-1471: Insufficiently Controlled Parser Differential
The product uses a common specification or format that is shared between multiple components or entities, but the components have different parsers that can interpret the same input in different, security-relevant ways.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- Missing validation
- Unsafe defaults
- Insufficient authorization or memory-safety invariant
Remediation
- Architecture and Design Implementation: If possible, ensure that the same parser is used by each component.
Detection
- Automated Dynamic Analysis: The different product components or entities could be tested using inputs with a variety of manipulations, such as differences in capitalization, whitespace, "boundary" tags, etc. The behavior of each component could be evaluated to see if the inputs are handled consistently.
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.