CWE-1289βImproper Validation of Unsafe Equivalence in Input
PUBLISHEDweakness record
released 2020-02-24 Β· last modified 2025-12-11
Metadata
Weakness Name
Improper Validation of Unsafe Equivalence in Input
Description
The product receives an input value that is used as a resource identifier or other type of reference, but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the input is equivalent to a potentially-unsafe value.
Attackers can sometimes bypass input validation schemes by finding inputs that appear to be safe, but will be dangerous when processed at a lower layer or by a downstream component. For example, a simple XSS protection mechanism might try to validate that an input has no "<script>" tags using case-sensitive matching, but since HTML is case-insensitive when processed by web browsers, an attacker could inject "<ScrIpT>" and trigger XSS.