CWE-580: clone() Method Without super.clone() | Glexia
CWE-580 (clone() Method Without super.clone()) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK context.
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-580: clone() Method Without super.clone()
clone() Method Without super.clone() represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Integrity,Other: Unexpected State,Quality Degradation
Developer Pattern
CWE-580 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-580, 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-580: clone() Method Without super.clone()
The product contains a clone() method that does not call super.clone() to obtain the new object.
All implementations of clone() should obtain the new object by calling super.clone(). If a class does not follow this convention, a subclass's clone() method will return an object of the wrong type.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- The following two classes demonstrate a bug introduced by not calling super.clone(). Because of the way Kibitzer implements clone(), FancyKibitzer's clone method will return an object of type Kibitzer instead of FancyKibitzer.
Remediation
- Implementation: Call super.clone() within your clone() method, when obtaining a new object.
- Implementation: In some cases, you can eliminate the clone method altogether and use copy constructors.
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
Related CWEs
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.