CWE Reference
CWE-475: Undefined Behavior for Input to API
Official CWE-475 CWE context with Glexia analysis, remediation guidance, related CVEs, and ATT&CK context.
Release 4.20weaknessIncomplete
Glexia's Take
CWE-475: Undefined Behavior for Input to API
Undefined Behavior for Input to API represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Other: Quality Degradation,Varies by Context
Developer Pattern
CWE-475 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-475, 4.20.
Official CWE Definition
CWE-475: Undefined Behavior for Input to API
The behavior of this function is undefined unless its control parameter is set to a specific value.
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
- Automated Static Analysis: Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.