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⇱ CWE - CWE-741: CWE CATEGORY: CERT C Secure Coding Standard (2008) Chapter 8 - Characters and Strings (STR) (4.20)

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CWE CATEGORY: CERT C Secure Coding Standard (2008) Chapter 8 - Characters and Strings (STR)

Category ID: 741
Vulnerability Mapping: PROHIBITED This CWE ID must not be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities
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Summary
Weaknesses in this category are related to the rules and recommendations in the Characters and Strings (STR) chapter of the CERT C Secure Coding Standard (2008).
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Membership
Nature Type ID Name
MemberOf 👁 View
View - a subset of CWE entries that provides a way of examining CWE content. The two main view structures are Slices (flat lists) and Graphs (containing relationships between entries).		 734 Weaknesses Addressed by the CERT C Secure Coding Standard (2008)
HasMember 👁 Base
Base - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.		 78 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection')
HasMember 👁 Base
Base - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.		 88 Improper Neutralization of Argument Delimiters in a Command ('Argument Injection')
HasMember 👁 Class
Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource.		 119 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer
HasMember 👁 Base
Base - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.		 120 Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input ('Classic Buffer Overflow')
HasMember 👁 Base
Base - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.		 135 Incorrect Calculation of Multi-Byte String Length
HasMember 👁 Base
Base - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.		 170 Improper Null Termination
HasMember 👁 Base
Base - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.		 193 Off-by-one Error
HasMember 👁 Base
Base - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.		 464 Addition of Data Structure Sentinel
HasMember 👁 Variant
Variant - a weakness that is linked to a certain type of product, typically involving a specific language or technology. More specific than a Base weakness. Variant level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 3 to 5 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.		 686 Function Call With Incorrect Argument Type
HasMember 👁 Class
Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource.		 704 Incorrect Type Conversion or Cast
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Vulnerability Mapping Notes

Usage: PROHIBITED

(this CWE ID must not be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities)

Reason: Category

Rationale:

This entry is a Category. Using categories for mapping has been discouraged since 2019. Categories are informal organizational groupings of weaknesses that can help CWE users with data aggregation, navigation, and browsing. However, they are not weaknesses in themselves.

Comments:

See member weaknesses of this category.
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Notes

Relationship

In the 2008 version of the CERT C Secure Coding standard, the following rules were mapped to the following CWE IDs:

  • CWE-78 STR02-C Sanitize data passed to complex subsystems
  • CWE-88 STR02-C Sanitize data passed to complex subsystems
  • CWE-119 STR31-C Guarantee that storage for strings has sufficient space for character data and the null terminator
  • CWE-119 STR32-C Null-terminate byte strings as required
  • CWE-119 STR33-C Size wide character strings correctly
  • CWE-120 STR35-C Do not copy data from an unbounded source to a fixed-length array
  • CWE-135 STR33-C Size wide character strings correctly
  • CWE-170 STR03-C Do not inadvertently truncate a null-terminated byte string
  • CWE-170 STR32-C Null-terminate byte strings as required
  • CWE-193 STR31-C Guarantee that storage for strings has sufficient space for character data and the null terminator
  • CWE-464 STR03-C Do not inadvertently truncate a null-terminated byte string
  • CWE-464 STR06-C Do not assume that strtok() leaves the parse string unchanged
  • CWE-686 STR37-C Arguments to character handling functions must be representable as an unsigned char
  • CWE-704 STR34-C Cast characters to unsigned types before converting to larger integer sizes
  • CWE-704 STR37-C Arguments to character handling functions must be representable as an unsigned char
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References
[REF-597] Robert C. Seacord. "The CERT C Secure Coding Standard". 1st Edition. Addison-Wesley Professional. 2008-10-14.
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Content History
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Submissions
Submission Date Submitter Organization
2008-11-24
(CWE 1.1, 2008-11-24) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
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Modifications
Modification Date Modifier Organization
2023-06-29
(CWE 4.12, 2023-06-29) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Mapping_Notes
2023-04-27
(CWE 4.11, 2023-04-27) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Mapping_Notes
2019-01-03
(CWE 3.2, 2019-01-03) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Description, Name, References
2017-11-08
(CWE 3.0, 2017-11-08) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Description, Name, Relationship_Notes
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Previous Entry Names
Change Date Previous Entry Name
2017-11-08 CERT C Secure Coding Section 07 - Characters and Strings (STR)
2019-01-03 CERT C Secure Coding (2008 Version) Section 07 - Characters and Strings (STR)
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Page Last Updated: April 30, 2026

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