CWE-1188

Base 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 Incomplete 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
Initialization of a Resource with an Insecure Default

Description

The product initializes or sets a resource with a default that is intended to be changed by the product's installer, administrator, or maintainer, but the default is not secure.

Top Monitored CVEs

CVE-2020-13927
CRITICAL KEV
9.8 99.8%
2020-11-10
CVE-2023-27524
CRITICAL KEV
9.8 97.4%
2023-04-24
CVE-2022-24706
CRITICAL KEV
9.8 92.3%
2022-04-26
CVE-2026-44338
HIGH
7.3 26.8%
2026-05-08
CVE-2025-48927
MEDIUM KEV
5.3 8.5%
2025-05-28
CVE-2021-41192
MEDIUM
6.5 8.0%
2021-11-23
CVE-2023-6448
CRITICAL KEV
9.8 2.1%
2023-12-05
CVE-2024-2912
CRITICAL
10.0 1.5%
2024-04-16

Consequences

Other — Varies by Context

The impact of insecure defaults varies widely depending on the functionality that the product controls.

Detection

Automated Static Analysis

Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)