CWE-1074: Class with Excessively Deep Inheritance

What is Class with Excessively Deep Inheritance?

• Overview: A class with excessively deep inheritance occurs when a class has too many parent classes, leading to complex and difficult-to-maintain code. This complexity can obscure vulnerabilities and make it harder to fix issues.

• Exploitation Methods:

• Attackers can exploit misunderstandings or errors in deeply nested inheritance hierarchies to introduce vulnerabilities.
• Common attack patterns include leveraging unexpected behavior in inherited methods or exploiting misconfigurations that arise from complex inheritance structures.

• Security Impact:

• Direct consequences include increased difficulty in understanding code, which can lead to overlooked vulnerabilities.
• Potential cascading effects include more challenging debugging and testing processes, making it harder to identify and patch security issues.
• Business impact involves higher maintenance costs and potential delays in addressing security vulnerabilities, which can lead to data breaches or system downtime.

• Prevention Guidelines:

• Specific code-level fixes include refactoring classes to reduce inheritance depth and using composition over inheritance where possible.
• Security best practices involve keeping the inheritance hierarchy as flat as possible and regularly reviewing class structures for excessive complexity.
• Recommended tools and frameworks include using static analysis tools to identify deep inheritance hierarchies and adhering to design principles that favor simplicity and clarity.

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Technical Details

Likelihood of Exploit: Not specified

Affected Languages: Not specified

Affected Technologies: Not specified