Suspicious Comment

The code contains comments that suggest the presence of bugs, incomplete functionality, or weaknesses.


Description

Many suspicious comments, such as BUG, HACK, FIXME, LATER, LATER2, TODO, in the code indicate missing security functionality and checking. Others indicate code problems that programmers should fix, such as hard-coded variables, error handling, not using stored procedures, and performance issues.

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

The following excerpt demonstrates the use of a suspicious comment in an incomplete code block that may have security repercussions.

if (user == null) {


  // TODO: Handle null user condition.


}

See Also

Comprehensive Categorization: Poor Coding Practices

Weaknesses in this category are related to poor coding practices.

SFP Secondary Cluster: Exposed Data

This category identifies Software Fault Patterns (SFPs) within the Exposed Data cluster (SFP23).

Comprehensive CWE Dictionary

This view (slice) covers all the elements in CWE.

Quality Weaknesses with Indirect Security Impacts

CWE identifiers in this view (slice) are quality issues that only indirectly make it easier to introduce a vulnerability and/or make the vulnerability more difficult t...

CWE Cross-section

This view contains a selection of weaknesses that represent the variety of weaknesses that are captured in CWE, at a level of abstraction that is likely to be useful t...


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