COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONDraft

CWE-453

Insecure Default Variable Initialization

The product, by default, initializes an internal variable with an insecure or less secure value than is possible.

Abstraction

Variant

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product, by default, initializes an internal variable with an insecure or less secure value than is possible.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Modify Application Data

Affected security scopes: Integrity

An attacker could gain access to and modify sensitive data or system information.

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

System Configuration

Secure configuration approach

Detail
Disable or change default settings when they can be used to abuse the system. Since those default settings are shipped with the product they are likely to be known by a potential attacker who is familiar with the product. For instance, default credentials should be changed or the associated accounts should be disabled.

Verification

How is it detected?

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.)