MITRE lately launched its yearly checklist of the 2024 CWE High 25 Most Harmful Software program Weaknesses.
This checklist differs from lists that comprise the commonest vulnerabilities, as it’s not a listing of vulnerabilities, however somewhat weaknesses in system design that may be exploited to leverage vulnerabilities.
“By definition, code injection is an assault, and once we take into consideration the High 25 it’s figuring out the weaknesses beneath,” stated Alec Summers, challenge chief for the CVE and CWE packages at MITRE.
These weaknesses can doubtlessly pave the way in which for vulnerabilities and assaults, so it’s essential to pay attention to them and mitigate them as a lot as doable.
In accordance with Summers, one development on this yr’s checklist is that whereas some weaknesses moved up or down the checklist, plenty of the weaknesses on the checklist are basic weaknesses which have been round for years, similar to people who allow SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
“The extra you perceive these weaknesses, and also you draw connections between these items, you’ll be able to truly begin to eradicate complete courses of issues that we see so many occasions,” he stated.
Addressing these weaknesses not solely improves product safety, but in addition has the potential to avoid wasting corporations cash as a result of “the extra weaknesses we keep away from in product growth, the much less vulnerabilities to handle after deployment,” he defined.
This yr’s checklist contains the next weaknesses:
- Improper Neutralization of Enter Throughout Net Web page Era (‘Cross-site Scripting’)
- Out-of-bounds Write
- Improper Neutralization of Particular Parts utilized in an SQL Command (‘SQL Injection’)
- Cross-Website Request Forgery (CSRF)
- Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Listing (‘Path Traversal’)
- Out-of-bounds Learn
- Improper Neutralization of Particular Parts utilized in an OS Command (‘OS Command Injection’)
- Use After Free
- Lacking Authorization
- Unrestricted Add of File with Harmful Sort
- Improper Management of Era of Code (‘Code Injection’)
- Improper Enter Validation
- Improper Neutralization of Particular Parts utilized in a Command (‘Command Injection’)
- Improper Authentication
- Improper Privilege Administration
- Deserialization of Untrusted Information
- Publicity of Delicate Info to an Unauthorized Actor
- Incorrect Authorization
- Server-Facet Request Forgery (SSRF)
- Improper Restriction of Operations throughout the Bounds of a Reminiscence Buffer
- NULL Pointer Dereference
- Use of Exhausting-coded Credentials
- Integer Overflow or Wraparound
- Uncontrolled Useful resource Consumption
- Lacking Authentication for Important Operate
The dataset the checklist is predicated on contains data for 31,779 Frequent Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) revealed between June 1, 2023 and June 1, 2024.
In accordance with Summers, this yr, the technique during which the checklist was created was totally different than in previous years as a result of MITRE and CISA concerned the broader safety group to investigate the dataset, whereas in earlier years MITRE’s Frequent Weak spot Enumeration (CWE) crew labored alone.
This may occasionally have resulted in lots of modifications from earlier years, and this yr’s checklist solely featured three weaknesses that retained the identical rating as final yr: #3 Improper Neutralization of Particular Parts utilized in an SQL Command (‘SQL Injection’), #10 Unrestricted Add of File with Harmful Sort, and #19 Server-Facet Request Forgery (SSRF).
The weaknesses that had the largest upward transfer from final yr’s checklist are #4 Cross-Website Request Forgery, which moved up 5 ranks; #11 Improper Management of Era of Code (‘Code Injection’), which moved up 12 ranks; #15 Improper Privilege Administration, which moved up seven ranks; and #18 Incorrect Authorization, which moved up six ranks.
Weaknesses that moved down in rank considerably embody #12 Improper Enter Validation, which moved down six ranks; #21 NULL Pointer Dereference, which moved down 9 ranks; #23 Integer Overflow or Wraparound, which moved down 9 ranks; and #25 Lacking Authentication for Important Operate, which moved down 5 ranks.
This yr additionally noticed two new entries to the checklist and two entries that left the High 25. New entries embody #17 Publicity of Delicate Info to an Unauthorized Actor and #24 Uncontrolled Useful resource Consumption. Earlier entries not within the High 25 are Concurrent Execution utilizing Shared Useful resource with Improper Synchronization (‘Race Situation’) and Incorrect Default Permissions.
In accordance with MITRE, one doable reason for the modifications is that they didn’t obtain CWE mappings from the U.S. Nationwide Vulnerability Database analysts for the CVE data from the primary half of 2024.
“It isn’t clear whether or not these gaps have an effect on the relative rankings, because the distribution of unmapped CVEs appears prone to align roughly with the CWE distribution of your entire information set,” MITRE wrote.