CWE-1177

Extended description

The developer - or customers - may wish to restrict or eliminate use of a function, library, or third party component for any number of reasons, including real or suspected vulnerabilities; difficulty to use securely; export controls or license requirements; obsolete or poorly-maintained code; internal code being scheduled for deprecation; etc. To reduce risk of vulnerabilities, the developer might maintain a list of "banned" functions that programmers must avoid using because the functions are difficult or impossible to use securely. This issue can also make the product more costly and difficult to maintain.

Common consequences1

• OtherReduce Maintainability

Potential mitigations1

1. Build and CompilationImplementation

   Identify a list of prohibited API functions and prohibit developers from using these functions, providing safer alternatives. In some cases, automatic code analysis tools or the compiler can be instructed to spot use of prohibited functions, such as the "banned.h" include file from Microsoft's SDL. [REF-554] [REF-1009] [REF-7]

Relationships1

• ChildOfCWE-710