CWE-688: Function Call With Incorrect Variable or… | Glexia
CWE-688 (Function Call With Incorrect Variable or Reference as Argument) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and…
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-688: Function Call With Incorrect Variable or Reference as Argument
Function Call With Incorrect Variable or Reference as Argument represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Other: Quality Degradation
Developer Pattern
CWE-688 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-688, 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-688: Function Call With Incorrect Variable or Reference as Argument
The product calls a function, procedure, or routine, but the caller specifies the wrong variable or reference as one of the arguments, which may lead to undefined behavior and resultant weaknesses.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- In the following Java snippet, the accessGranted() method is accidentally called with the static ADMIN_ROLES array rather than the user roles.
Remediation
- Testing: Because this function call often produces incorrect behavior it will usually be detected during testing or normal operation of the product. During testing exercise all possible control paths will typically expose this weakness except in rare cases when the incorrect function call accidentally produces the correct results or if the provided argument type is very similar to the expected argument type.
Detection
- Other: While this weakness might be caught by the compiler in some languages, it can occur more frequently in cases in which the called function accepts variable numbers of arguments, such as format strings in C. It also can occur in loosely typed languages or environments. This might require an understanding of intended program behavior or design to determine whether the value is incorrect.
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.