Security misconfiguration occurs when system security settings across application stacks—such as servers, databases, and networks—are inadequately implemented or left in their default states. These missteps expose critical vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit.
Hard-coded credentials refer to embedding authentication information such as usernames, passwords, API keys, or cryptographic keys directly into the source code. Developers might do this for convenience, testing, or quick deployment. However, these credentials often remain in production, creating vulnerabilities.
In software development, a NULL pointer is a pointer variable that does not reference any valid memory location. Dereferencing such a pointer—attempting to access the memory it supposedly points to—results in undefined behaviour. In many systems, this leads to crashes, data corruption, or even exploitable vulnerabilities.
CWE-863: Incorrect Authorisation occurs when an application fails to enforce correct authorisation measures, allowing unauthorised users or processes to access resources, perform operations, or retrieve data that should be off-limits. It is sometimes conflated with authentication flaws, but the essence of CWE-863 lies in improper or missing checks that would otherwise confirm if a user has the necessary permissions to perform a specific action.
From a technical standpoint, one might imagine an application employing robust identity verification (authentication) only to overlook critical checks about what a user is allowed to do once logged in (authorisation). This oversight can be the gateway to data leaks, privilege escalation, or even sabotage of core business processes.
Deserialisation refers to the process of converting serialised data (a compact format of an object or data structure) back into its original form. While this operation is indispensable in modern software, it becomes a vulnerability when the deserialised data originates from an untrusted source.
When untrusted data is deserialised without validation, attackers can exploit the process to execute arbitrary code, manipulate application logic, or inject malicious payloads. CWE-502 encapsulates this weakness, highlighting its potential to compromise data integrity, confidentiality, and availability.