CWE-192 – Integer Coercion Error

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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.

Modes of Introduction:

– Implementation

 

Likelihood of Exploit: Medium

 

Related Weaknesses

CWE-681

 

Consequences

Availability: DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU), DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory), DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart

Integer coercion often leads to undefined states of execution resulting in infinite loops or crashes.

Integrity, Confidentiality, Availability: Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands

In some cases, integer coercion errors can lead to exploitable buffer overflow conditions, resulting in the execution of arbitrary code.

Integrity, Other: Other

Integer coercion errors result in an incorrect value being stored for the variable in question.

 

Potential Mitigations

Phase: Requirements

Description: 

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

Phase: Architecture and Design

Description: 

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

Phase: Implementation

Description: 

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

CVE References