Struts: Validator Without Form Field
Validation fields that do not appear in forms they are associated with indicate that the validation logic is out of date.
Description
It is easy for developers to forget to update validation logic when they make changes to an ActionForm class. One indication that validation logic is not being properly maintained is inconsistencies between the action form and the validation form.
Although J2EE applications are not generally susceptible to memory corruption attacks, if a J2EE application interfaces with native code that does not perform array bounds checking, an attacker may be able to use an input validation mistake in the J2EE application to launch a buffer overflow attack.
Demonstrations
The following examples help to illustrate the nature of this weakness and describe methods or techniques which can be used to mitigate the risk.
Note that the examples here are by no means exhaustive and any given weakness may have many subtle varieties, each of which may require different detection methods or runtime controls.
Example One
This example shows an inconsistency between an action form and a validation form. with a third field.
This first block of code shows an action form that has two fields, startDate and endDate.
public class DateRangeForm extends ValidatorForm {
String startDate, endDate;
public void setStartDate(String startDate) {
this.startDate = startDate;
}
public void setEndDate(String endDate) {
this.endDate = endDate;
}
}This second block of related code shows a validation form with a third field: scale. The presence of the third field suggests that DateRangeForm was modified without taking validation into account.
<form name="DateRangeForm">
<field property="startDate" depends="date">
<arg0 key="start.date"/>
</field>
<field property="endDate" depends="date">
<arg0 key="end.date"/>
</field>
<field property="scale" depends="integer">
<arg0 key="range.scale"/>
</field>
</form>See Also
Weaknesses in this category are related to poor coding practices.
This category identifies Software Fault Patterns (SFPs) within the Tainted Input to Command cluster (SFP24).
This view (slice) covers all the elements in CWE.
This view (slice) lists weaknesses that can be introduced during implementation.
This view (slice) covers issues that are found in Java programs that are not common to all languages.
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