Function Call With Incorrect Order of Arguments

Description

While this weakness might be caught by the compiler in some languages, it can occur more frequently in cases in which the called function accepts variable numbers or types of arguments, such as format strings in C. It also can occur in languages or environments that do not enforce strong typing.

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 PHP method authenticates a user given a username/password combination but is called with the parameters in reverse order.

function authenticate($username, $password) {


  // authenticate user
  ...

}

authenticate($_POST['password'], $_POST['username']);

See Also