SQ14130
Detected Windows executable files that might not cover all statically linked libraries with static cast vulnerability mitigation protection.
| priority | CI/CD status | severity | effort | SAFE level | SAFE assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | pass | low | medium | None | None |
About the issue
Static Cast Guard (CastGuard) protects the code flow integrity by preventing type confusion issues that may occur during pointer cast operation. This mitigation is detected as enabled, but its effectiveness is impacted by the use of outdated precompiled code. It was determined that the application had been linked against static libraries produced by multiple toolchain versions. Because some of them predate the general availability of the static cast guard vulnerability mitigation, it is likely that protection coverage gaps exist.
How to resolve the issue
- Recompile statically linked libraries with the same programming language toolchain version.
- In Microsoft VisualStudio, you can enable cast guard mitigation by passing the /d2CastGuard parameter to the compiler and linker.
Incidence statistics
ReversingLabs periodically collects and analyzes the contents of popular software package repositories for threat research purposes. Analysis results are used to calculate incidence statistics for issues (policy violations) that Spectra Assure can detect in software packages.
This section is updated when new data becomes available.
Total amount of packages analyzed
- RubyGems: 183K
- Nuget: 644K
- PyPi: 628K
- NPM: 3.72M
Recommended reading
- CastGuard: Mitigating Type Confusion in C++ (External resource - BlackHat)
- Static library (statically linked library) (External resource - Wikipedia)