CWE-454: External Initialization of Trusted Variables or Data Stores

The product initializes critical internal variables or data stores using inputs that can be modified by untrusted actors.

A product system should be reluctant to trust variables that have been initialized outside of its trust boundary, especially if they are initialized by users. The variables may have been initialized incorrectly. If an attacker can initialize the variable, then they can influence what the vulnerable system will do.

Consequences

• Integrity: Modify Application Data

How to prevent it

• Implementation: A product system should be reluctant to trust variables that have been initialized outside of its trust boundary. Ensure adequate checking (e.g. input validation) is performed when relying on input from outside a trust boundary.
• Architecture and Design: Avoid any external control of variables. If necessary, restrict the variables that can be modified using an allowlist, and use a different namespace or naming convention if possible.

Recent advisories

• GHSA-whxw-24jc-cwmv — Kirby: External Initialization of the Panel on reverse proxy setups with the `Forwarded` header
• GHSA-mj59-h3q9-ghfh — OpenClaw: MCP stdio server env could load dangerous startup variables from workspace config

All advisories for CWE-454