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A security bug is a software bug that benefits someone other than intended beneficiaries in the intended ways.
Security bugs introduce security vulnerabilities by compromising one or more of:
- Authentication of users and other entities
- Authorization of access rights and privileges
- Data confidentiality
- Data integrity
Security bugs need not be identified, surfaced nor exploited to qualify as such. Some exploited ones, particularly viruses, have been known to wreak global damage at massive cost.
Causes
Security bugs, like all other software bugs, stem from root causes that can generally be traced to either absent or inadequate:
- Software developer training
- Use case analysis
- Software engineering methodology
- Quality assurance testing
- ...and other best practices
Taxonomy
Security bugs generally fall into a fairly small number of broad categories that include:
- Memory safety (e.g. buffer overflow and dangling pointer bugs)
- Race condition
- Secure input and output handling
- Faulty use of an API
- Improper use case handling
- Improper exception handling
Mitigation
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