CWE-198: Use of Incorrect Byte Ordering
Official CWE-198 CWE context with Glexia analysis, remediation guidance, related CVEs, and ATT&CK context.
Glexia's Take
CWE-198: Use of Incorrect Byte Ordering
Use of Incorrect Byte Ordering represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Integrity: Unexpected State
Developer Pattern
CWE-198 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.
Confidence
high confidence from CWE-198, 4.20.
Official CWE Definition
CWE-198: Use of Incorrect Byte Ordering
The product receives input from an upstream component, but it does not account for byte ordering (e.g. big-endian and little-endian) when processing the input, causing an incorrect number or value to be used.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- Missing validation
- Unsafe defaults
- Insufficient authorization or memory-safety invariant
Remediation
- Use safe APIs
- Centralize the control
- Add regression tests
- Review logs and telemetry for attempted abuse
Detection
- Black Box: Because byte ordering bugs are usually very noticeable even with normal inputs, this bug is more likely to occur in rarely triggered error conditions, making them difficult to detect using black box methods.
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
Related CWEs
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.