Common Weakness Enumeration

CWE-361

Grouping Prohibited

7PK - Time and State

Status: Incomplete

This category represents one of the phyla in the Seven Pernicious Kingdoms vulnerability classification. It includes weaknesses related to the improper management of time and state in an environment that supports simultaneous or near-simultaneous computation by multiple systems, processes, or threads. According to the authors of the Seven Pernicious Kingdoms, "Distributed computation is about time and state. That is, in order for more than one component to communicate, state must be shared, and all that takes time. Most programmers anthropomorphize their work. They think about one thread of control carrying out the entire program in the same way they would if they had to do the job themselves. Modern computers, however, switch between tasks very quickly, and in multi-core, multi-CPU, or distributed systems, two events may take place at exactly the same time. Defects rush to fill the gap between the programmer's model of how a program executes and what happens in reality. These defects are related to unexpected interactions between threads, processes, time, and information. These interactions happen through shared state: semaphores, variables, the file system, and, basically, anything that can store information."

Grouping entries organize the catalogue and should not be used to map the root cause of a vulnerability.

Mapping guidance

This entry is a Grouping. Using groupings for mapping has been discouraged since 2019. They are informal organizational groupings of weaknesses that can help CWE users with data aggregation, navigation, and browsing. However, they are not weaknesses in themselves.

See member weaknesses of this category.

Relationships and members
Has Member: CWE-364 · View CWE-700
Has Member: CWE-367 · View CWE-700
Has Member: CWE-377 · View CWE-700
Has Member: CWE-382 · View CWE-700
Has Member: CWE-383 · View CWE-700
Has Member: CWE-384 · View CWE-700
Has Member: CWE-412 · View CWE-700
Content history
Submission: 7 Pernicious Kingdoms · 2006-07-19 · CWE Draft 3
Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2008-09-08 · CWE 1.0

updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings

Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2008-10-14 · CWE 1.0.1

updated Description

Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2011-03-29 · CWE 1.12

updated Relationships

Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2012-05-11 · CWE 2.2

updated Related_Attack_Patterns

Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2015-12-07 · CWE 2.9

updated Relationships

Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2017-01-19 · CWE 2.10

updated Relationships

Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2017-11-08 · CWE 3.0

updated Description, Name, References, Related_Attack_Patterns, Taxonomy_Mappings

Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2019-06-20 · CWE 3.3

updated Relationships

Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2020-02-24 · CWE 4.0

updated References, Relationships

Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2023-04-27 · CWE 4.11

updated Mapping_Notes

Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2023-06-29 · CWE 4.12

updated Mapping_Notes

Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2026-10-28 · CWE 5.0

updated Mapping_Notes, References, Type

0 vulnerabilities reference this CWE, most recent first.

No vulnerabilities reference this CWE.

No mitigation information available for this CWE.

No CAPEC attack patterns related to this CWE.