Failure to account for default case in switch

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Vulnerabilities Table of Contents

Description
The failure to account for the default case in switch statements may lead to complex logical errors and may aid in other, unexpected security-related conditions.

Consequences

Undefined: Depending on the logical circumstances involved, any consequences may result: e.g., issues of confidentiality, authentication, authorization, availability, integrity, accountability, or non-repudiation.

Exposure period

Implementation: This flaw is a simple logic issue, introduced entirely at implementation time.

Platform


 * Language: Any
 * Platform: Any

Required resources

Any

Severity

Undefined.

Likelihood of exploit

Undefined.

This flaw represents a common problem in software development, in which not all possible values for a variable are considered or handled by a given process. Because of this, further decisions are made based on poor information, and cascading failure results.

This cascading failure may result in any number of security issues, and constitutes a significant failure in the system. In the case of switch style statements, the very simple act of creating a default case can mitigate this situation, if done correctly.

Often however, the default cause is used simply to represent an assumed option, as opposed to working as a sanity check. This is poor practice and in some cases is as bad as omitting a default case entirely.

Risk Factors
TBD

Examples
In general, a safe switch statement has this form:

switch (value) { case 'A': printf("A!\n"); break; case 'B': printf("B!\n"); break; default: printf("Neither A nor B\n"); }

This is because the assumption cannot be made that all possible cases are accounted for. A good practice is to reserve the default case for error handling.

Related Attacks

 * Attack 1
 * Attack 2

Related Vulnerabilities

 * Undefined: A logical flaw of this kind might lead to any number of other flaws.

Related Controls

 * Implementation: Ensure that there are no unaccounted for cases, when adjusting flow or values based on the value of a given variable. In switch statements, this can be accomplished through the use of the default label.

Related Technical Impacts

 * Technical Impact 1
 * Technical Impact 2