CWE-455: Non-exit on Failed Initialization | Glexia
CWE-455 (Non-exit on Failed Initialization) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK context.
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-455: Non-exit on Failed Initialization
Non-exit on Failed Initialization represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Integrity Other: Modify Application Data Alter Execution Logic: The application could be placed in an insecure state that may allow an attacker to modify sensitive data or allow unintended logic to be executed.
Developer Pattern
CWE-455 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-455, 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-455: Non-exit on Failed Initialization
The product does not exit or otherwise modify its operation when security-relevant errors occur during initialization, such as when a configuration file has a format error or a hardware security module (HSM) cannot be activated, which can cause the product to execute in a less secure fashion than intended by the administrator.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- The following code intends to limit certain operations to the administrator only. If the application is unable to extract the state information - say, due to a database timeout - then the $uid variable will not be explicitly set by the programmer. This will cause $uid to be regarded as equivalent to "0" in the conditional, allowing the original user to perform administrator actions. Even if the attacker cannot directly influence the state data, unexpected errors could cause incorrect privileges to be assigned to a user just by accident.
Remediation
- Implementation: Follow the principle of failing securely when an error occurs. The system should enter a state where it is not vulnerable and will not display sensitive error messages to a potential attacker.
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.