CWE-563: Assignment to Variable without Use
Description
The variable's value is assigned but never used, making it a dead store.
After the assignment, the variable is either assigned another value or goes out of scope. It is likely that the variable is simply vestigial, but it is also possible that the unused variable points out a bug.
- Abstraction
- BaseA weakness specific enough to point to detection and prevention methods.
- Likelihood of exploit
- Not rated by MITRE
- Status
- Draft
Common consequences
- Other
Quality Degradation; Varies by Context
This weakness could be an indication of a bug in the program or a deprecated variable that was not removed and is an indication of poor quality. This could lead to further bugs and the introduction of weaknesses.
Potential mitigations
- Implementation
Remove unused variables from the code.
Related weaknesses
Parent weaknesses
CAPEC attack patterns that exploit it
CWE 4.20 links no CAPEC attack pattern to this weakness.