CWE-1024

Comparison of Incompatible Types
AI Translation Available

The product performs a comparison between two entities, but the entities are of different, incompatible types that cannot be guaranteed to provide correct results when they are directly compared.

Status
incomplete
Abstraction
base
JavaScript PHP Not Language-Specific

In languages that are strictly typed but support casting/conversion, such as C or C++, the programmer might assume that casting one entity to the same type as another entity will ensure that the comparison will be performed correctly, but this cannot be guaranteed. In languages that are not strictly typed, such as PHP or JavaScript, there may be implicit casting/conversion to a type that the programmer is unaware of, causing unexpected results; for example, the string '123' might be converted to a number type. See examples.

Common Consequences

other
Impacts
varies by context

Potential Mitigations

Phases:
testing
Descriptions:
• Thoroughly test the comparison scheme before deploying code into production. Perform positive testing as well as negative testing.