Overly Restrictive Regular Expression
A regular expression is overly restrictive, which prevents dangerous values from being detected.
Description
This weakness is not about regular expression complexity. Rather, it is about a regular expression that does not match all values that are intended. Consider the use of a regexp to identify acceptable values or to spot unwanted terms. An overly restrictive regexp misses some potentially security-relevant values leading to either false positives *or* false negatives, depending on how the regexp is being used within the code. Consider the expression /[0-8]/ where the intention was /[0-9]/. This expression is not "complex" but the value "9" is not matched when maybe the programmer planned to check for it.
See Also
Weaknesses in this category are related to comparison.
This category identifies Software Fault Patterns (SFPs) within the Tainted Input to Command cluster (SFP24).
Weaknesses in this category are typically found in functionality that processes data. Data processing is the manipulation of input to retrieve or save information.
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