Base weakness
Draft
CWE-396: Declaration of Catch for Generic Exception
Catching overly broad exceptions promotes complex error handling code that is more likely to contain security vulnerabilities.
2
Recorded CVEs
With this primary weakness
0
KEVs
In the CISA KEV catalog
Not rated
Likelihood of exploit
Per MITRE
Base
Abstraction
MITRE classification
Overview
Multiple catch blocks can get ugly and repetitive, but "condensing" catch blocks by catching a high-level class like Exception can obscure exceptions that deserve special treatment or that should not be caught at this point in the program. Catching an overly broad exception essentially defeats the purpose of a language's typed exceptions, and can become particularly dangerous if the program grows and begins to throw new types of exceptions. The new exception types will not receive any attention.