CWE-78: Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command
Official CWE-78 CWE context with Glexia analysis, remediation guidance, related CVEs, and ATT&CK context.
Glexia's Take
CWE-78: OS Command Injection
Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Remote command execution
- Privilege escalation
- Host compromise
Developer Pattern
CWE-78 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
medium confidence from CWE-78, starter-2026-05.
Official CWE Definition
CWE-78: Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command
OS Command Injection is a software weakness pattern tracked by CWE 78. The local starter record is replaced by the official MITRE CWE import when the sync pipeline runs.
OS Command Injection is a software weakness pattern tracked by CWE 78. The local starter record is replaced by the official MITRE CWE import when the sync pipeline runs.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- Passing request parameters to a shell command string.
Remediation
- Avoid shell invocation
- Argument arrays
- Strict allow-lists
- Sandboxed execution
Detection
- SAST
- DAST
- Command execution tracing
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
Related CWEs
No related CWE relationships are published yet.
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.