CWE-1419: Incorrect Initialization of Resource

Description:
The product attempts to initialize a resource but does not correctly do so, which might leave the resource in an unexpected, incorrect, or insecure state when it is accessed.

Extended Description:
This can have security implications when the associated resource is expected to have certain properties or values. Examples include a variable that determines whether a user has been authenticated or not, or a register or fuse value that determines the security state of the product. 
				 For software, this weakness can frequently occur when implicit initialization is used, meaning the resource is not explicitly set to a specific value. For example, in C, memory is not necessarily cleared when it is allocated on the stack, and many scripting languages use a default empty, null value, or zero value when a variable is not explicitly initialized. 
				 For hardware, this weakness frequently appears with reset values and fuses. After a product reset, hardware may initialize registers incorrectly. During different phases of a product lifecycle, fuses may be set to incorrect values. Even if fuses are set to correct values, the lines to the fuse could be broken or there might be hardware on t

Affected languages: Not Language-Specific
Affected technologies: Not Technology-Specific
Parent weaknesses: CWE-665

Consequences:
  - Confidentiality: Read Memory
  - Authorization: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity
  - Other: Varies by Context

Detection methods:
  - Automated Static Analysis: Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without havin

Mitigations:
  - [Implementation] Choose the safest-possible initialization for security-related resources.
  - [Implementation] Ensure that each resource (whether variable, memory buffer, register, etc.) is fully initialized.
  - [Implementation] Pay close attention to complex conditionals or reset sources   that affect initialization, since some paths might not perform the initialization.
  - [Architecture and Design] Ensure that the design and architecture clearly identify what the initialization should be, and that the initialization does not have security implications.

Demonstrative examples:
Consider example design module system verilog code shown below. The register_example module is an example parameterized module that defines two parameters, REGISTER_WIDTH and REGISTER_DEFAULT. Register_example module defines a Secure_mode setting, which when set makes the register content read-only and not modifiable by software writes. register_top module instantiates two registers, Insecure_Device_ID_1 and Insecure_Device_ID_2. Generally, registers containing device identifier values are required to be read only to prevent any possibility of software modifying these values.
These example instantiations show how, in a hardware design, it would be possible to instantiate the register module with insecure defaults and parameters.
// Parameterized Register module example  
				  // Secure_mo

This code attempts to login a user using credentials from a POST request:
Because the $authorized variable is never initialized, PHP will automatically set $authorized to any value included in the POST request if register_globals is enabled. An attacker can send a POST request with an unexpected third value 'authorized' set to 'true' and gain authorized status without supplying valid credentials.
// $user and $pass automatically set from POST request 
                     if (login_user($user,$pass)) { $authorized = true; } 
                     ... 
                     
                   if ($authorized) { generatePage(); }
$user = $_POST['user']; $pass = $_POST['pass']; $authorized = false; if (login_user($user,$pass)) { $authorized = true; } 
                   ...

Real-world examples:
  - CVE-2020-27211: Chain: microcontroller system-on-chip uses a register value stored in flash to set product protection state on the memory bus and does not contain protection against fault injection (CWE-1319) which l
  - CVE-2023-25815: chain: a change in an underlying package causes the gettext function to use implicit initialization with a hard-coded path (CWE-1419) under the user-writable C:\ drive, introducing an untrusted search
  - CVE-2022-43468: WordPress module sets internal variables based on external inputs, allowing false reporting of the number of views
  - CVE-2022-36349: insecure default variable initialization in BIOS firmware for a hardware board allows DoS
  - CVE-2015-7763: distributed filesystem only initializes part of the variable-length padding for a packet, allowing attackers to read sensitive information from previously-sent packets in the same memory location