Overview
While CVE identifies specific instances of vulnerabilities in products, CWE identifies the underlying types of weaknesses that lead to those vulnerabilities (e.g., 'Improper Input Validation' or 'Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input').
Purpose
- Education: Helping developers understand and avoid common coding errors.
- Tooling: Providing a common language for SAST and DAST tools to report findings.
- Analysis: Identifying trends in software security flaws.
Importance
By addressing the root causes identified in CWE, organizations can prevent entire classes of vulnerabilities from being introduced into their software.