CWE-110

Variant Abstraction Level
Pillar — Highest-level weakness category
Class — Abstract, language-independent
Base — Specific enough to detect
Variant — Tied to specific technology
Compound — Requires multiple weaknesses Draft MITRE CWE Status
Stable — Fully reviewed and complete
Draft — Under development, may change
Incomplete — Partially defined by MITRE
Deprecated — No longer recommended
Obsolete — Replaced by another CWE
Struts: Validator Without Form Field

Description

Validation fields that do not appear in forms they are associated with indicate that the validation logic is out of date.

It is easy for developers to forget to update validation logic when they make changes to an ActionForm class. One indication that validation logic is not being properly maintained is inconsistencies between the action form and the validation form. Although J2EE applications are not generally susceptible to memory corruption attacks, if a J2EE application interfaces with native code that does not perform array bounds checking, an attacker may be able to use an input validation mistake in the J2EE application to launch a buffer overflow attack.

Consequences

Other — Other

It is critically important that validation logic be maintained and kept in sync with the rest of the application. Unchecked input is the root cause of some of today's worst and most common software security problems. Cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and process control vulnerabilities all stem from incomplete or absent input validation.

Detection

Automated Static Analysis

To find the issue in the implementation, manual checks or automated static analysis could be applied to the XML configuration files.

Manual Static Analysis

To find the issue in the implementation, manual checks or automated static analysis could be applied to the XML configuration files.