CWE-369: Divide By Zero

What is Divide By Zero?

• Overview: Divide By Zero (CWE-369) is a vulnerability that occurs when a program attempts to divide a number by zero. This operation is undefined in mathematics and causes runtime errors or crashes in software applications, potentially leading to security issues.

• Exploitation Methods:

• Attackers can exploit this vulnerability by providing input that results in a division by zero, causing the program to crash or behave unpredictably.
• Common attack patterns include manipulating input values in calculations involving dimensions like size, length, width, and height to trigger a divide-by-zero error.

• Security Impact:

• Direct consequences of successful exploitation include application crashes, denial of service, or unexpected behavior.
• Potential cascading effects may involve data corruption, security bypass, or increased attack surface for further exploits.
• Business impact includes service disruptions, loss of customer trust, and potential legal or financial repercussions.

• Prevention Guidelines:

• Specific code-level fixes include implementing checks to ensure divisor values are not zero before performing division operations.
• Security best practices involve validating and sanitizing all input, using exception handling to manage errors gracefully, and employing defensive programming techniques.
• Recommended tools and frameworks are static analysis tools to detect division by zero vulnerabilities and using languages or libraries with built-in safeguards against such errors.

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Technical Details

Likelihood of Exploit: Medium

Affected Languages: Not specified

Affected Technologies: Not specified