Each guideline in the CERT C Secure Coding Standard contains a Risk Assessment section which attempts to provide software developers with an indication of the potential consequences of not addressing a particular vulnerability in their code (along with some indication of expected remediation costs). This information may be used to prioritize the repair of vulnerability classes by a development team. It is generally assumed that new code will be developed to be compliant with all applicable guidelines.
Priority and Levels
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Each rule and recommendation has an assigned priority. Priorities are assigned using a metric based on Failure Mode, Effects, and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) \[[IEC 60812|AA. C References#IEC 60812 2006]\]. Three values are assigned for each rule on a scale of 1 to 3 for |
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The metric is designed primarily for remediation projects. It is assumed that new development efforts will conform with the entire standard.
Automated Detection
Where applicable, guidelines provide information on analyzer tools that can automatically diagnose violations of secure coding guidelines. Most automated analysis for the C programming language are neither sound nor complete, so the inclusion of a tool in this section typically means that this tool can diagnose some violations of this particular rule. Currently, there is no conformance test suite available that can be used to access the false positive and false negative rates of analyzers when checking conformance for a particular guideline against source code. (Although CERT has announced it will coordinate the development of a freely available, open source licensed conformance test.)
Because of the lack of an existing conformance test the information in these sections may be:
- provided by the vendors
- determined by CERT by informally evaluating the analyzer
- determined by CERT by reviewing the vendor documentation
Additionally, because tools and The CERT C Secure Coding Standard wiki both evolve continuously, this information can become dated and obsolete. Where possible, we try to reference the exact version of the tool for which the results were obtained.
Related Vulnerabilities
The risk analysis section also contains a link to search for related vulnerabilities on the CERT website. Whenever possible, CERT Vulnerability Notes are tagged with a keyword corresponding to the unique ID of the coding guideline. This search provides you with an up to date list of real-world vulnerabilities which have been determined to be at least partially caused by a violation of this specific guideline. These vulnerabilities are only labeled as such when the vulnerability analysis team at the CERT/CC is able to evaluate the source code and precisely determine the cause of the vulnerability. Because many vulnerability notes refer to vulnerabilities in closed-source software systems, it is not always possible to provide this additional analysis. Consequently, the related vulnerabilities field tends to be somewhat sparsely populated.
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