CWE-589

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 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
Call to Non-ubiquitous API

Description

The product uses an API function that does not exist on all versions of the target platform. This could cause portability problems or inconsistencies that allow denial of service or other consequences.

Some functions that offer security features supported by the OS are not available on all versions of the OS in common use. Likewise, functions are often deprecated or made obsolete for security reasons and should not be used.

Consequences

Other — Quality Degradation

Mitigations

Phase: Implementation

Always test your code on any platform on which it is targeted to run on.

Phase: Testing

Test your code on the newest and oldest platform on which it is targeted to run on.

Phase: Testing

Develop a system to test for API functions that are not portable.

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.)