Incomplete List of Disallowed Inputs

The product implements a protection mechanism that relies on a list of inputs (or properties of inputs) that are not allowed by policy or otherwise require other action to neutralize before additional processing takes place, but the list is incomplete.


Demonstrations

The following examples help to illustrate the nature of this weakness and describe methods or techniques which can be used to mitigate the risk.

Note that the examples here are by no means exhaustive and any given weakness may have many subtle varieties, each of which may require different detection methods or runtime controls.

Example One

The following code attempts to stop XSS attacks by removing all occurences of "script" in an input string.

public String removeScriptTags(String input, String mask) {
  return input.replaceAll("script", mask);
}

Because the code only checks for the lower-case "script" string, it can be easily defeated with upper-case script tags.

See Also

Comprehensive Categorization: Protection Mechanism Failure

Weaknesses in this category are related to protection mechanism failure.

OWASP Top Ten 2021 Category A03:2021 - Injection

Weaknesses in this category are related to the A03 category "Injection" in the OWASP Top Ten 2021.

Data Validation Issues

Weaknesses in this category are related to a software system's components for input validation, output validation, or other kinds of validation. Validation is a freque...

Comprehensive CWE Dictionary

This view (slice) covers all the elements in CWE.

Weaknesses Introduced During Implementation

This view (slice) lists weaknesses that can be introduced during implementation.

Weaknesses Introduced During Design

This view (slice) lists weaknesses that can be introduced during design.


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