RE: [EXTERNAL]: Re: [External] - Re: Bad loop construct

[Kevin Hale]

I agree with Shravan.  Stand-alone use cases may be a small percentage of total 
usage, but there are business cases where it is absolutely critical.


From: Mahidhara, Shravan 
Sent: Wednesday, June 1, 2022 9:58 AM
To: Kurt Seifried ; Kevin Keen 
Cc: Steve Grubb ; Steven M Christey ; CWE 
Research Discussion 
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL]: Re: [External] - Re: Bad loop construct


WARNING: This email originated from outside of the organization. DO NOT click 
links, open attachments, or respond unless you recognize the sender and know 
the content is safe.



There are numerous systems that do not need an active internet connection to 
run software and carry out their functions. A quick example is software running 
on geographically distributed systems used in industries like transportation, 
mining, etc.
Do these systems need external connectivity to download software? Yes.
Do they need always-on connectivity to run the software and execute their 
steady state functions? Absolutely not.

I agree that we probably need to better account for the cloud space, but to 
state that there is not so much a case for standalone software is incorrect.

Regards,
Shravan


From: Kurt Seifried mailto:k...@seifried.org>>
Sent: Wednesday, June 1, 2022 8:32 AM
To: Kevin Keen mailto:kk...@colsa.com>>
Cc: Steve Grubb mailto:sgr...@redhat.com>>; Steven M 
Christey mailto:co...@mitre.org>>; CWE Research Discussion 
mailto:cwe-research-list@mitre.org>>
Subject: [EXTERNAL]: Re: [External] - Re: Bad loop construct

I’d challenge you to use your phone or computer without an internet connection. 
Realistically for the work and activity most engage in on compute devices, 
connected software is the default now. On Jun 1, 2022, at 7:12 AM, Kevin Keen 
mailto:kk...@colsa.com>>
ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerStart
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The sender's identity could not be verified and someone may be impersonating 
the sender.
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I’d challenge you to use your phone or computer without an internet connection. 
Realistically for the work and activity most engage in on compute devices, 
connected software is the default now.

On Jun 1, 2022, at 7:12 AM, Kevin Keen 
mailto:kk...@colsa.com>> wrote:


I agree that CWEs could use some updates. In addition to possible new CWEs, I 
remember looking at a few that didn't have code examples and thinking that they 
could benefit from that.


I would however, push back just a little on stand alone software not being a 
common case. I think it depends on your area. For the average at home user a 
trend toward cloud is probably true. But we see a lot of software in the field 
I'm in and it is rarely ever cloud based.

From: Kurt Seifried mailto:k...@seifried.org>>
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2022 8:21 PM
To: Steve Grubb mailto:sgr...@redhat.com>>
Cc: Steven M Christey mailto:co...@mitre.org>>; CWE Research 
Discussion mailto:cwe-research-list@mitre.org>>
Subject: [External] - Re: Bad loop construct

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click 
links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content 
is safe.

On a related item, I'm doing a CWE a week with my Smartcontracts working group 
(~10 total and then we'll release a short paper on it at the end of summer) at 
the Cloud Security Alliance. Longer term my plan is to look at all the stuff 
covered in places like rekt.news or Microsoft blog entries and so on, and make 
sure it maps cleanly to a CWE, and if not, to make a CWE for it. E.g. so far:
[cid:image001.png@01D875A5.2AAAF450]

I've submitted 1, 3, and 4 so far, and 5 are going in next week (3 for 1 sale 
=). In my mind every CVE/vuln/etc writeup should map to a CWE, and I don't mean 
CWE-20.

We literally need a few hundred more CWE's, especially in the smart 
contract/blockchain space, and the Cloud SaaS space. CWE is showing its age 
with respect to "software" being something you download and run locally. That's 
not the case so much anymore.


On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 3:30 PM Steve Grubb 
mailto:sgr...@redhat.com>> wrote:
Hello everyone,

On Tuesday, May 24, 2022 5:49:57 PM EDT Steven M Christey wrote:
> Kurt said “I've seen code with loops of one because of future growth, or
> because various options were removed and it's easier than refactoring the
> code” – so a CWE-related writeup wouldn’t want to inadvertently call all
> loops of size 1 “bad.”

From what I can see, it's a mixed bag. There are cases like Kurt mentioned,
but also some that are thinko's.

> But remember that a weakness is about a  that only becomes a
> vulnerability  Code analysis tools report
> weaknesses all the time, but determining false positives is a different
&

RE: [EXTERNAL]: Re: [External] - Re: Bad loop construct

[Mahidhara, Shravan]

There are numerous systems that do not need an active internet connection to 
run software and carry out their functions. A quick example is software running 
on geographically distributed systems used in industries like transportation, 
mining, etc.
Do these systems need external connectivity to download software? Yes.
Do they need always-on connectivity to run the software and execute their 
steady state functions? Absolutely not.

I agree that we probably need to better account for the cloud space, but to 
state that there is not so much a case for standalone software is incorrect.

Regards,
Shravan


From: Kurt Seifried 
Sent: Wednesday, June 1, 2022 8:32 AM
To: Kevin Keen 
Cc: Steve Grubb ; Steven M Christey ; CWE 
Research Discussion 
Subject: [EXTERNAL]: Re: [External] - Re: Bad loop construct

I’d challenge you to use your phone or computer without an internet connection. 
Realistically for the work and activity most engage in on compute devices, 
connected software is the default now. On Jun 1, 2022, at 7:12 AM, Kevin Keen 
mailto:kk...@colsa.com>>
ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerStart
Be Careful With This Message
The sender's identity could not be verified and someone may be impersonating 
the sender.
Please use caution responding to this email or opening any attachments.
ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerEnd
I’d challenge you to use your phone or computer without an internet connection. 
Realistically for the work and activity most engage in on compute devices, 
connected software is the default now.


On Jun 1, 2022, at 7:12 AM, Kevin Keen 
mailto:kk...@colsa.com>> wrote:


I agree that CWEs could use some updates. In addition to possible new CWEs, I 
remember looking at a few that didn't have code examples and thinking that they 
could benefit from that.


I would however, push back just a little on stand alone software not being a 
common case. I think it depends on your area. For the average at home user a 
trend toward cloud is probably true. But we see a lot of software in the field 
I'm in and it is rarely ever cloud based.

From: Kurt Seifried mailto:k...@seifried.org>>
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2022 8:21 PM
To: Steve Grubb mailto:sgr...@redhat.com>>
Cc: Steven M Christey mailto:co...@mitre.org>>; CWE Research 
Discussion mailto:cwe-research-list@mitre.org>>
Subject: [External] - Re: Bad loop construct

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click 
links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content 
is safe.

On a related item, I'm doing a CWE a week with my Smartcontracts working group 
(~10 total and then we'll release a short paper on it at the end of summer) at 
the Cloud Security Alliance. Longer term my plan is to look at all the stuff 
covered in places like rekt.news or Microsoft blog entries and so on, and make 
sure it maps cleanly to a CWE, and if not, to make a CWE for it. E.g. so far:
[cid:image001.png@01D8759E.1110B5E0]

I've submitted 1, 3, and 4 so far, and 5 are going in next week (3 for 1 sale 
=). In my mind every CVE/vuln/etc writeup should map to a CWE, and I don't mean 
CWE-20.

We literally need a few hundred more CWE's, especially in the smart 
contract/blockchain space, and the Cloud SaaS space. CWE is showing its age 
with respect to "software" being something you download and run locally. That's 
not the case so much anymore.


On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 3:30 PM Steve Grubb 
mailto:sgr...@redhat.com>> wrote:
Hello everyone,

On Tuesday, May 24, 2022 5:49:57 PM EDT Steven M Christey wrote:
> Kurt said “I've seen code with loops of one because of future growth, or
> because various options were removed and it's easier than refactoring the
> code” – so a CWE-related writeup wouldn’t want to inadvertently call all
> loops of size 1 “bad.”

From what I can see, it's a mixed bag. There are cases like Kurt mentioned,
but also some that are thinko's.

> But remember that a weakness is about a  that only becomes a
> vulnerability  Code analysis tools report
> weaknesses all the time, but determining false positives is a different
> story that’s not in CWE’s purview. Similarly, external parties can decide
> which CWEs become a “requirement” or not – it’s primarily CWE’s
> responsibility to provide the identifier and explanation for the mistake,
> and how it can (at least sometimes) contribute to vulnerabilities.
>
> In this “dir” example, we can’t be clear whether the developer made a
> mistake or not. But we can observe that there’s a loop construct with only
> one element, and that it’s (sometimes) going to be a mistake. And it seems
> like such constructs could occur in most languages.
>
> I’m not sure how deep CWE should go to cover “just bad syntax,” but for
> this example, I think CWE-670 is probably the closest match in spirit –
&

Re: [External] - Re: Bad loop construct

[llianghan]

I agree you all are pain in the ass.
Keep spamming my mailbox.


On Wed, 1 Jun 2022, 9:13 pm Kevin Keen,  wrote:

>
> I agree that CWEs could use some updates. In addition to possible new
> CWEs, I remember looking at a few that didn't have code examples and
> thinking that they could benefit from that.
>
>
> I would however, push back just a little on stand alone software not being
> a common case. I think it depends on your area. For the average at home
> user a trend toward cloud is probably true. But we see a lot of software in
> the field I'm in and it is rarely ever cloud based.
> --
> *From:* Kurt Seifried 
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 31, 2022 8:21 PM
> *To:* Steve Grubb 
> *Cc:* Steven M Christey ; CWE Research Discussion <
> cwe-research-list@mitre.org>
> *Subject:* [External] - Re: Bad loop construct
>
> CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not
> click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know
> the content is safe.
>
> On a related item, I'm doing a CWE a week with my Smartcontracts working
> group (~10 total and then we'll release a short paper on it at the end of
> summer) at the Cloud Security Alliance. Longer term my plan is to look at
> all the stuff covered in places like rekt.news or Microsoft blog entries
> and so on, and make sure it maps cleanly to a CWE, and if not, to make a
> CWE for it. E.g. so far:
> [image: Screenshot 2022-05-31 191808.png]
>
> I've submitted 1, 3, and 4 so far, and 5 are going in next week (3 for 1
> sale =). In my mind every CVE/vuln/etc writeup should map to a CWE, and I
> don't mean CWE-20.
>
> We literally need a few hundred more CWE's, especially in the smart
> contract/blockchain space, and the Cloud SaaS space. CWE is showing its age
> with respect to "software" being something you download and run locally.
> That's not the case so much anymore.
>
>
> On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 3:30 PM Steve Grubb  wrote:
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> On Tuesday, May 24, 2022 5:49:57 PM EDT Steven M Christey wrote:
> > Kurt said “I've seen code with loops of one because of future growth, or
> > because various options were removed and it's easier than refactoring the
> > code” – so a CWE-related writeup wouldn’t want to inadvertently call all
> > loops of size 1 “bad.”
>
> From what I can see, it's a mixed bag. There are cases like Kurt
> mentioned,
> but also some that are thinko's.
>
> > But remember that a weakness is about a  that only becomes a
> > vulnerability  Code analysis tools report
> > weaknesses all the time, but determining false positives is a different
> > story that’s not in CWE’s purview. Similarly, external parties can decide
> > which CWEs become a “requirement” or not – it’s primarily CWE’s
> > responsibility to provide the identifier and explanation for the mistake,
> > and how it can (at least sometimes) contribute to vulnerabilities.
> >
> > In this “dir” example, we can’t be clear whether the developer made a
> > mistake or not. But we can observe that there’s a loop construct with
> only
> > one element, and that it’s (sometimes) going to be a mistake. And it
> seems
> > like such constructs could occur in most languages.
> >
> > I’m not sure how deep CWE should go to cover “just bad syntax,” but for
> > this example, I think CWE-670 is probably the closest match in spirit –
> > the algorithm (probably) isn’t implementing the logic that the programmer
> > thought they were implementing. There’s a good argument for CWE-1164 as
> > well, though, since the developer might be doing this intentionally even
> > though the code is not technically essential.
>
> In the end, we chose 1164. It was added to a csv file where we are
> cateloging
> warnings from a couple tools and mapping to CWE. It is here in case anyone
> finds it useful:
>
> https://github.com/csutils/csmock/blob/main/cwe-map.csv
> 
>
> Thanks for the help!
>
> -Steve
>
>
>
>
> --
> Kurt Seifried (He/Him)
> k...@seifried.org
> --
> The information contained in this e-mail and any attachments from COLSA
> Corporation may contain company sensitive and/or proprietary information,
> and is intended only for the named recipient to whom it was originally
> addressed. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
> distribution, or copying of this e-mail or its attachments is strictly
> prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the
> sender immediately by return e-mail and permanently delete the e-mail and
> any attachments.
>
> COLSA Proprie

Re: [External] - Re: Bad loop construct

[Kevin Keen]

I agree that CWEs could use some updates. In addition to possible new CWEs, I 
remember looking at a few that didn't have code examples and thinking that they 
could benefit from that.


I would however, push back just a little on stand alone software not being a 
common case. I think it depends on your area. For the average at home user a 
trend toward cloud is probably true. But we see a lot of software in the field 
I'm in and it is rarely ever cloud based.

From: Kurt Seifried 
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2022 8:21 PM
To: Steve Grubb 
Cc: Steven M Christey ; CWE Research Discussion 

Subject: [External] - Re: Bad loop construct

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click 
links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content 
is safe.

On a related item, I'm doing a CWE a week with my Smartcontracts working group 
(~10 total and then we'll release a short paper on it at the end of summer) at 
the Cloud Security Alliance. Longer term my plan is to look at all the stuff 
covered in places like rekt.news or Microsoft blog entries and so on, and make 
sure it maps cleanly to a CWE, and if not, to make a CWE for it. E.g. so far:
[Screenshot 2022-05-31 191808.png]

I've submitted 1, 3, and 4 so far, and 5 are going in next week (3 for 1 sale 
=). In my mind every CVE/vuln/etc writeup should map to a CWE, and I don't mean 
CWE-20.

We literally need a few hundred more CWE's, especially in the smart 
contract/blockchain space, and the Cloud SaaS space. CWE is showing its age 
with respect to "software" being something you download and run locally. That's 
not the case so much anymore.


On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 3:30 PM Steve Grubb 
mailto:sgr...@redhat.com>> wrote:
Hello everyone,

On Tuesday, May 24, 2022 5:49:57 PM EDT Steven M Christey wrote:
> Kurt said “I've seen code with loops of one because of future growth, or
> because various options were removed and it's easier than refactoring the
> code” – so a CWE-related writeup wouldn’t want to inadvertently call all
> loops of size 1 “bad.”

>From what I can see, it's a mixed bag. There are cases like Kurt mentioned,
but also some that are thinko's.

> But remember that a weakness is about a  that only becomes a
> vulnerability  Code analysis tools report
> weaknesses all the time, but determining false positives is a different
> story that’s not in CWE’s purview. Similarly, external parties can decide
> which CWEs become a “requirement” or not – it’s primarily CWE’s
> responsibility to provide the identifier and explanation for the mistake,
> and how it can (at least sometimes) contribute to vulnerabilities.
>
> In this “dir” example, we can’t be clear whether the developer made a
> mistake or not. But we can observe that there’s a loop construct with only
> one element, and that it’s (sometimes) going to be a mistake. And it seems
> like such constructs could occur in most languages.
>
> I’m not sure how deep CWE should go to cover “just bad syntax,” but for
> this example, I think CWE-670 is probably the closest match in spirit –
> the algorithm (probably) isn’t implementing the logic that the programmer
> thought they were implementing. There’s a good argument for CWE-1164 as
> well, though, since the developer might be doing this intentionally even
> though the code is not technically essential.

In the end, we chose 1164. It was added to a csv file where we are cateloging
warnings from a couple tools and mapping to CWE. It is here in case anyone
finds it useful:

https://github.com/csutils/csmock/blob/main/cwe-map.csv

Thanks for the help!

-Steve




--
Kurt Seifried (He/Him)
k...@seifried.org

The information contained in this e-mail and any attachments from COLSA 
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of this e-mail or its attachments is strictly prohibited. If you have received 
this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail and 
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Re: [External] - RE: Bad loop construct

[David A. Wheeler]

I think there's an easy way to distinguish "likely problem" from
"likely false positive" in this case. If a shell loops over one value
AND that value is the name a previously-assigned variable, that is
likely a variable name missing its "$". Otherwise it's plausibly a
loop over 1 value (which is a little odd, but not insane and
such a construct is less likely to be an error).

I doubt such a construct often leads to a vulnerability.
It seems like the sort of thing likely to be detected in practically any
testing, since it's deterministic & doesn't depend on attacker input at all.

--- David A. Wheeler

Re: [External] - RE: Bad loop construct

[Kevin Keen]

I believe this is my first time posting to this list, so apologies if I'm 
stepping out of line.


These comments are focused on the looping once aspect of this discussion. There 
is perhaps a 2nd aspect at play in Kurt's example with confusing naming, but 
I'm setting that aside for now.


I feel like a loop that will always execute once should​ be considered a 
weakness. In the best case of "planning for the future" it reminds me of the 
code smell Speculative Generality, just at a lower level. At the very least it 
needlessly increases complexity and slightly hampers readability, and we have 
several CWEs that target other weaknesses for those reasons.

It is worth stressing that just because a loop executes once does not mean it 
has this same problem. The problem is when the loop will always execute and 
always execute just once.

Given the CWEs mentioned so far I think I like 1164 "Irrelevant Code" the best, 
but I feel like this particular issue should live under the 1226 "Complexity 
Issues" category. I suppose a very weak argument could be made for CWE 1121 
"Excessive McCabe Cyclomatic Complexity". But a single loop is basically linear 
so that's quite a stretch.

As a side note, we have run into several cases of other issues where the best 
match for something we were looking at was one of the members of "Complexity 
Issues", but the "excessive" part didn't really fit.



Thanks!



Kevin





From: Steven M Christey 
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2022 4:49 PM
To: Seifried, Kurt ; Grubb, Steve 
Cc: CWE Research Discussion 
Subject: [External] - RE: Bad loop construct

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click 
links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content 
is safe.


Just some quick comments on this topic.



It’s an interesting observation about shell languages being different than C. I 
know I’ve probably offended some co-workers recently with my initial attempts 
at bash scripting 😉 It feels to me like the syntax is somehow less stringent, 
but maybe the key difference is in interpreted languages versus compiled 
languages, combined with the lack of strict typing.



Kurt said “I've seen code with loops of one because of future growth, or 
because various options were removed and it's easier than refactoring the code” 
– so a CWE-related writeup wouldn’t want to inadvertently call all loops of 
size 1 “bad.”



But remember that a weakness is about a  that only becomes a 
vulnerability  Code analysis tools report 
weaknesses all the time, but determining false positives is a different story 
that’s not in CWE’s purview. Similarly, external parties can decide which CWEs 
become a “requirement” or not – it’s primarily CWE’s responsibility to provide 
the identifier and explanation for the mistake, and how it can (at least 
sometimes) contribute to vulnerabilities.



In this “dir” example, we can’t be clear whether the developer made a mistake 
or not. But we can observe that there’s a loop construct with only one element, 
and that it’s (sometimes) going to be a mistake. And it seems like such 
constructs could occur in most languages.



I’m not sure how deep CWE should go to cover “just bad syntax,” but for this 
example, I think CWE-670 is probably the closest match in spirit – the 
algorithm (probably) isn’t implementing the logic that the programmer thought 
they were implementing. There’s a good argument for CWE-1164 as well, though, 
since the developer might be doing this intentionally even though the code is 
not technically essential.



For issues where there might be some varying opinions about whether some code 
choice is “good” or not, note that we also cover source code conventions with 
CWE-1078: Inappropriate Source Code Style or Formatting. It has some useful 
children.



- Steve




The information contained in this e-mail and any attachments from COLSA 
Corporation may contain company sensitive and/or proprietary information, and 
is intended only for the named recipient to whom it was originally addressed. 
If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, distribution, or copying 
of this e-mail or its attachments is strictly prohibited. If you have received 
this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail and 
permanently delete the e-mail and any attachments.


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