Home/CWE/Improper Handling of Alternate Encoding
Weakness

Improper Handling of Alternate Encoding

CWE-173 · Variant · Draft

The product does not properly handle when an input uses an alternate encoding that is valid for the control sphere to which the input is being sent.

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Weakness Relationships

Where this weakness sits in the CWE hierarchy. Walk up to broader classes or down to more specific variants.
Parent of this (broader)
ChildOfCWE-172 · Encoding Error
Related
CanPrecedeCWE-289 · Authentication Bypass by Alternate Name
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Attack Patterns (CAPEC)

12
How adversaries exploit this weakness, per MITRE CAPEC.
CAPEC-120Double Encoding
CAPEC-267Leverage Alternate Encoding
CAPEC-3Using Leading 'Ghost' Character Sequences to Bypass Input Filters
CAPEC-4Using Alternative IP Address Encodings
CAPEC-52Embedding NULL Bytes
CAPEC-53Postfix, Null Terminate, and Backslash
CAPEC-64Using Slashes and URL Encoding Combined to Bypass Validation Logic
CAPEC-71Using Unicode Encoding to Bypass Validation Logic
CAPEC-72URL Encoding
CAPEC-78Using Escaped Slashes in Alternate Encoding
CAPEC-79Using Slashes in Alternate Encoding
CAPEC-80Using UTF-8 Encoding to Bypass Validation Logic
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CVEs With This Weakness

5
CVEs tagged with this weakness.
CVECVE-2024-54158
CVECVE-2023-26303
CVECVE-2023-26303
CVECVE-2023-26302
CVECVE-2023-26302
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