CA3012: Review code for regex injection vulnerabilities

Property	Value
Rule ID	CA3012
Title	Review code for regex injection vulnerabilities
Category	Security
Fix is breaking or non-breaking	Non-breaking
Enabled by default in .NET 9	No

Cause

Potentially untrusted HTTP request input reaches a regular expression.

By default, this rule analyzes the entire codebase, but this is configurable.

Rule description

When working with untrusted input, be mindful of regex injection attacks. An attacker can use regex injection to maliciously modify a regular expression, to make the regex match unintended results, or to make the regex consume excessive CPU resulting in a Denial of Service attack.

This rule attempts to find input from HTTP requests reaching a regular expression.

Note

This rule can't track data across assemblies. For example, if one assembly reads the HTTP request input and then passes it to another assembly that creates a regular expression, this rule won't produce a warning.

Note

There is a configurable limit to how deep this rule will analyze data flow across method calls. See Analyzer Configuration for how to configure the limit in an EditorConfig file.

How to fix violations

Some mitigations against regex injections include:

• Always use a match timeout when using regular expressions.
• Avoid using regular expressions based on user input.
• Escape special characters from user input by calling System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Escape or another method.
• Allow only non-special characters from user input.

When to suppress warnings

If you know you're using a match timeout and the user input is free of special characters, it's okay to suppress this warning.

Suppress a warning

If you just want to suppress a single violation, add preprocessor directives to your source file to disable and then re-enable the rule.

#pragma warning disable CA3012
// The code that's violating the rule is on this line.
#pragma warning restore CA3012

To disable the rule for a file, folder, or project, set its severity to none in the configuration file.

[*.{cs,vb}]
dotnet_diagnostic.CA3012.severity = none

For more information, see How to suppress code analysis warnings.

Configure code to analyze

Use the following options to configure which parts of your codebase to run this rule on.

• Exclude specific symbols
• Exclude specific types and their derived types

You can configure these options for just this rule, for all rules it applies to, or for all rules in this category (Security) that it applies to. For more information, see Code quality rule configuration options.

Exclude specific symbols

You can exclude specific symbols, such as types and methods, from analysis. For example, to specify that the rule should not run on any code within types named MyType, add the following key-value pair to an .editorconfig file in your project:

dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_symbol_names = MyType

Allowed symbol name formats in the option value (separated by |):

• Symbol name only (includes all symbols with the name, regardless of the containing type or namespace).
• Fully qualified names in the symbol's documentation ID format. Each symbol name requires a symbol-kind prefix, such as M: for methods, T: for types, and N: for namespaces.
• .ctor for constructors and .cctor for static constructors.

Examples:

Option Value	Summary
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_symbol_names = MyType	Matches all symbols named MyType.
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_symbol_names = MyType1|MyType2	Matches all symbols named either MyType1 or MyType2.
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_symbol_names = M:NS.MyType.MyMethod(ParamType)	Matches specific method MyMethod with the specified fully qualified signature.
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_symbol_names = M:NS1.MyType1.MyMethod1(ParamType)|M:NS2.MyType2.MyMethod2(ParamType)	Matches specific methods MyMethod1 and MyMethod2 with the respective fully qualified signatures.

Exclude specific types and their derived types

You can exclude specific types and their derived types from analysis. For example, to specify that the rule should not run on any methods within types named MyType and their derived types, add the following key-value pair to an .editorconfig file in your project:

dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_type_names_with_derived_types = MyType

Allowed symbol name formats in the option value (separated by |):

• Type name only (includes all types with the name, regardless of the containing type or namespace).
• Fully qualified names in the symbol's documentation ID format, with an optional T: prefix.

Examples:

Option Value	Summary
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_type_names_with_derived_types = MyType	Matches all types named MyType and all of their derived types.
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_type_names_with_derived_types = MyType1|MyType2	Matches all types named either MyType1 or MyType2 and all of their derived types.
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_type_names_with_derived_types = M:NS.MyType	Matches specific type MyType with given fully qualified name and all of its derived types.
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_type_names_with_derived_types = M:NS1.MyType1|M:NS2.MyType2	Matches specific types MyType1 and MyType2 with the respective fully qualified names, and all of their derived types.

Pseudo-code examples

Violation

using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

public partial class WebForm : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    public string SearchableText { get; set; }

    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        string findTerm = Request.Form["findTerm"];
        Match m = Regex.Match(SearchableText, "^term=" + findTerm);
    }
}

Imports System
Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions

Public Partial Class WebForm
    Inherits System.Web.UI.Page

    Public Property SearchableText As String

    Protected Sub Page_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
        Dim findTerm As String = Request.Form("findTerm")
        Dim m As Match = Regex.Match(SearchableText, "^term=" + findTerm)
    End Sub
End Class