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CWE-192 — Integer Coercion Error

provenance: imported · CWE: CWE-192

CWE-192: Integer Coercion Error

MITRE CWE weakness

Kind Weakness
Abstraction Variant
Status Incomplete
Likelihood of exploit Medium

Description

Integer coercion refers to a set of flaws pertaining to the type casting, extension, or truncation of primitive data types.

Several flaws fall under the category of integer coercion errors. For the most part, these errors in and of themselves result only in availability and data integrity issues. However, in some circumstances, they may result in other, more complicated security related flaws, such as buffer overflow conditions.

Common consequences

  • Availability: DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU), DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory), DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart
  • Integrity, Confidentiality, Availability: Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands
  • Integrity, Other: Other

Mitigations

Requirements — A language which throws exceptions on ambiguous data casts might be chosen.

Architecture and Design — Design objects and program flow such that multiple or complex casts are unnecessary

Implementation — Ensure that any data type casting that you must used is entirely understood in order to reduce the plausibility of error in use.

References

  • CWE page: https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/192.html
  • CWE list: https://cwe.mitre.org/data/index.html