Unquoted Search Path or Element
The product uses a search path that contains an unquoted element, in which the element contains whitespace or other separators. This can cause the product to access resources in a parent path.
Description
If a malicious individual has access to the file system, it is possible to elevate privileges by inserting such a file as "C:\Program.exe" to be run by a privileged program making use of WinExec.
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 example demonstrates the weakness.
UINT errCode = WinExec( "C:\\Program Files\\Foo\\Bar", SW_SHOW );See Also
Weaknesses in this category are related to exposed resource.
Weaknesses in this category are related to the handling of files within a software system. Files, directories, and folders are so central to information technology tha...
This category identifies Software Fault Patterns (SFPs) within the Path Traversal cluster (SFP16).
This view (slice) covers all the elements in CWE.
CWE entries in this view have maintenance notes. Maintenance notes are an indicator that an entry might change significantly in future versions. This view was created...
This view (slice) lists weaknesses that can be introduced during implementation.
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