CWE-509: Replicating Malicious Code (Virus or Worm) | Glexia
CWE-509 (Replicating Malicious Code (Virus or Worm)) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK context.
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-509: Replicating Malicious Code (Virus or Worm)
Replicating Malicious Code (Virus or Worm) represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Confidentiality Integrity Availability: Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands
Developer Pattern
CWE-509 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-509, 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-509: Replicating Malicious Code (Virus or Worm)
Replicating malicious code, including viruses and worms, will attempt to attack other systems once it has successfully compromised the target system or the product.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- Missing validation
- Unsafe defaults
- Insufficient authorization or memory-safety invariant
Remediation
- Operation: Antivirus software scans for viruses or worms.
- Installation: Always verify the integrity of the software that is being installed.
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.