Weakness (CWE)
CWE-178: Improper Handling of Case Sensitivity
The product does not properly account for differences in case sensitivity when accessing or determining the properties of a resource, leading to inconsistent results.
How to prevent it (3 mitigations)
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Architecture and Design
Avoid making decisions based on names of resources (e.g. files) if those resources can have alternate names.
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Implementation
Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does.
When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, "boat" may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as "red" or "blue."
Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs. This is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code's environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, denylists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright.
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Implementation
Inputs should be decoded and canonicalized to the application's current internal representation before being validated (CWE-180). Make sure that the application does not decode the same input twice (CWE-174). Such errors could be used to bypass allowlist validation schemes by introducing dangerous inputs after they have been checked.
Source: MITRE CWE-178
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High 8.2CVE-2026-80343 Public exploit
Apache Camel: Camel-Netty-HTTP Security Constraint Bypass via Case-Sensitive Context-Path Matching
Improper Handling of Case Sensitivity vulnerability in Apache Camel Netty HTTP component. This issue affects Apache Camel: from 4.0.0 before 4.18.5, from 4.19.0 before 4.22.1. The camel-netty-http security constraint compared the request path against the conf…
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High 7.3CVE-2025-46701 Public exploit
Apache Tomcat: Security constraint bypass for CGI scripts
Improper Handling of Case Sensitivity vulnerability in Apache Tomcat's GCI servlet allows security constraint bypass of security constraints that apply to the pathInfo component of a URI mapped to the CGI servlet. This issue affects Apache Tomcat: from 11.0.0…
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High 7.5CVE-2022-22968 Public exploit
Improper handling of case sensitivity in Spring Framework
In Spring Framework versions 5.3.0 - 5.3.18, 5.2.0 - 5.2.20, and older unsupported versions, the patterns for disallowedFields on a DataBinder are case sensitive which means a field is not effectively protected unless it is listed with both upper and lower ca…