What are the consequences of CWE-685?

Exploiting CWE-685 can lead to: Quality Degradation.

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Variant weakness

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CWE-685: Function Call With Incorrect Number of Arguments

The product calls a function, procedure, or routine, but the caller specifies too many arguments, or too few arguments, which may lead to undefined behavior and resultant weaknesses.

Last updated May 1, 2026

0

Recorded CVEs

With this primary weakness

0

KEVs

In the CISA KEV catalog

Not rated

Likelihood of exploit

Per MITRE

Variant

Abstraction

MITRE classification

Overview

CWE-685 (Function Call With Incorrect Number of Arguments) is a variant-level software weakness catalogued by MITRE in the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE). It describes a recurring type of mistake that can lead to exploitable security vulnerabilities.

Common consequences

What can happen when CWE-685 is exploited.

Quality Degradation

Affects: Other

How it happens

When it is introduced

Typically introduced during these phases of the software lifecycle.

Implementation

Applies to

Languages

C

Perl

How to prevent it

Practical mitigations for CWE-685, grouped by where in the lifecycle they apply.

Testing

Because this function call often produces incorrect behavior it will usually be detected during testing or normal operation of the product. During testing exercise all possible control paths will typically expose this weakness except in rare cases when the incorrect function call accidentally produces the correct results or if the provided argument type is very similar to the expected argument type.

How to detect it

Other

While this weakness might be caught by the compiler in some languages, it can occur more frequently in cases in which the called function accepts variable numbers of arguments, such as format strings in C. It also can occur in languages or environments that do not require that functions always be called with the correct number of arguments, such as Perl.

Terminology & mappings

Mapped taxonomies

Software Fault Patterns: Glitch in computation (SFP1)
CERT C Secure Coding: Call functions with the correct number and type of arguments (EXP37-C) — CWE More Specific fit
CERT C Secure Coding: Use valid format strings (FIO47-C) — Imprecise fit

Frequently asked questions

Common questions about CWE-685.

What is CWE-685?: The product calls a function, procedure, or routine, but the caller specifies too many arguments, or too few arguments, which may lead to undefined behavior and resultant weaknesses.
How do you prevent CWE-685?: Because this function call often produces incorrect behavior it will usually be detected during testing or normal operation of the product. During testing exercise all possible control paths will typically expose this weakness except in rare cases when the incorrect function call accidentally produces the correct results or if the provided argument type is very similar to the expected argument type.
How is CWE-685 detected?: Other: While this weakness might be caught by the compiler in some languages, it can occur more frequently in cases in which the called function accepts variable numbers of arguments, such as format strings in C. It also can occur in languages or environments that do not require that functions always be called with the correct number of arguments, such as Perl.
What are the consequences of CWE-685?: Exploiting CWE-685 can lead to: Quality Degradation.

References

Weakness data is sourced from the MITRE CWE catalog (v4.20). CVE associations are aggregated and kept current by RadicalNotion.AI.

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