CWE-375: Returning a Mutable Object to an Untrusted Caller | Glexia
CWE-375 (Returning a Mutable Object to an Untrusted Caller) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK…
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-375: Returning a Mutable Object to an Untrusted Caller
Returning a Mutable Object to an Untrusted Caller represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Access Control,Integrity: Modify Memory: Potentially data could be tampered with by another function which should not have been tampered with.
Developer Pattern
CWE-375 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-375, 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-375: Returning a Mutable Object to an Untrusted Caller
Sending non-cloned mutable data as a return value may result in that data being altered or deleted by the calling function.
In situations where functions return references to mutable data, it is possible that the external code which called the function may make changes to the data sent. If this data was not previously cloned, the class will then be using modified data which may violate assumptions about its internal state.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- This class has a private list of patients, but provides a way to see the list : While this code only means to allow reading of the patient list, the getPatients() method returns a reference to the class's original patient list instead of a reference to a copy of the list. Any caller of this method can arbitrarily modify the contents of the patient list even though it is a private member of the class.
Remediation
- Implementation: Declare returned data which should not be altered as constant or immutable.
- Implementation: Clone all mutable data before returning references to it. This is the preferred mitigation. This way, regardless of what changes are made to the data, a valid copy is retained for use by the class.
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.