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CWE Reference

CWE-663: Use of a Non-reentrant Function in a Concurrent Context

Official CWE-663 CWE context with Glexia analysis, remediation guidance, related CVEs, and ATT&CK context.

Release 4.20weaknessDraft

Glexia's Take

CWE-663: Use of a Non-reentrant Function in a Concurrent Context

Use of a Non-reentrant Function in a Concurrent Context represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.

Executive Impact

  • Integrity,Confidentiality,Other: Modify Memory,Read Memory,Modify Application Data,Read Application Data,Alter Execution Logic

Developer Pattern

CWE-663 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-663, 4.20.

Official CWE Definition

CWE-663: Use of a Non-reentrant Function in a Concurrent Context

The product calls a non-reentrant function in a concurrent context in which a competing code sequence (e.g. thread or signal handler) may have an opportunity to call the same function or otherwise influence its state.

Type
weakness
Abstraction
Base
Status
Draft
Source
MITRE CWE definition

Developer And Remediation Guidance

How teams prevent and detect this weakness

Causes

  • In this example, a signal handler uses syslog() to log a message:
  • The following code relies on getlogin() to determine whether or not a user is trusted. It is easily subverted.

Remediation

  • Implementation: Use reentrant functions if available.
  • Implementation: Add synchronization to your non-reentrant function.
  • Implementation: In Java, use the ReentrantLock Class.

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

Related CVEs

Related CVE mappings appear after CVE records are cross-indexed.

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ATT&CK Relevance

ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.