CWE

Research Concepts

ID: 1000		Date: (C)2012-05-14   (M)2022-10-10
Type: view		Status: DRAFT

Description

This view provides an organizational structure for weaknesses that is different than the approaches undertaken by taxonomies such as Seven Pernicious Kingdoms.

This view is intended to facilitate research into weaknesses, including their inter-dependencies and their role in vulnerabilities. It classifies weaknesses in a way that largely ignores how they can be detected, where they appear in code, and when they are introduced in the software development life-cycle. Instead, it is mainly organized according to abstractions of software behaviors. It uses a deep hierarchical organization, with more levels of abstraction than other classification schemes. The top-level entries are called Pillars.

Where possible, this view uses abstractions that do not consider particular languages, frameworks, technologies, life-cycle development phases, frequency of occurrence, or types of resources. It explicitly identifies relationships that form chains and composites, which have not been a formal part of past classification efforts. Chains and composites might help explain why mutual exclusivity is difficult to achieve within security error taxonomies.

This view is roughly aligned with MITRE's research into vulnerability theory, especially with respect to behaviors and resources. Ideally, this view will only cover weakness-to-weakness relationships, with minimal overlap and very few categories. This view could be useful for academic research, CWE maintenance, and mapping. It can be leveraged to systematically identify theoretical gaps within CWE and, by extension, the general security community.

Applicable Platforms
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Common Consequences
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Detection Methods
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Potential Mitigations
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Relationships

Related CWE	Type	View	Chain
CWE-1000 HasMember CWE-710	Weakness	10

Demonstrative Examples
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White Box Definitions
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Black Box Definitions
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Taxynomy Mappings
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References:
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