SEC61-JG. Ensure security sensitive methods are called with validated arguments

Application code that calls security-sensitive methods must validate the arguments being passed to the methods. In particular, null values may be interpreted as benign by certain security-sensitive methods and may override default settings. Although security-sensitive methods must be coded defensively in the first place, sometimes the onus must be on the client code to validate the arguments it provides. Failure to do so can result in privilege escalation and execution of arbitrary code.

Noncompliant Code Example

This noncompliant code example shows the two-argument doPrivileged() method which takes an access control context as the second argument. The construct allows changing privileges to that of a previously saved context.

AccessController.doPrivileged(new PrivilegedAction<Void>() {
  public Void run() {
    // ...
  }
}, accessControlContext);

A null access control context means that the privileges would not be reduced to those of the previously saved context. Consequently, this code may grant excess privileges if accessControlContext is null. If AccessController.doPrivileged() is intended to be called with a null access control context, it should be explicitly passed the null constant.

Compliant Solution 

This compliant solution prevents excess privileges from being granted by ensuring that accessControlContext is not null.

if (accessControlContext == null) {
  throw new SecurityException("Missing AccessControlContext");
}
AccessController.doPrivileged(new PrivilegedAction<Void>() {
  public Void run() {
    // ...
  }
}, accessControlContext);

Applicability

Security-sensitive methods must be thoroughly understood and their parameters validated (to prevent null arguments for instance) in order to prevent corner cases with unexpected argument values. If unexpected argument values are passed to security-sensitive methods, arbitrary code execution becomes possible and privilege escalation becomes likely.

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