# Declaration of Catch for Generic Exception (CWE-396)

Catching overly broad exceptions defeats the purpose of typed exceptions and can result in unexpected behavior.

- Prevalence: Focused 1 language covered
- Impact: Medium Review recommended
- Prevention: Documented 1 fix examples

**OWASP:** Insecure Design (A04:2021-Insecure Design) - #4

## Description

When exceptions are caught too broadly (e.g., catching Exception instead of specific types), the code may inadvertently catch and suppress exceptions it wasn't designed to handle, hiding bugs or security issues.

## Prevention

### Python

Catch specific exceptions instead of bare except: or except BaseException

## Warning Signs

- [LOW] overly broad exception handlers (bare except: or except BaseException)
that catch system exceptions 

## Consequences

- DoS
- Hide Activities

## Mitigations

- Catch specific exception types that you know how to handle
- Re-throw exceptions that you cannot properly handle
- Log unexpected exceptions before re-throwing

## Detection

- Total rules: 1
- Languages: python

## Rules by Language

### Python (1 rules)

- **Overly Broad Exception Handler** [LOW]: Detects overly broad exception handlers (bare except: or except BaseException)
that catch system exceptions like KeyboardInterrupt, SystemExit, which should
not be caught in normal error handling.
  - Remediation: Catch specific exceptions or use Exception instead of bare except or BaseException.

```python
try:
    process_data()
except ValueError as e:
    logger.error(f"Invalid value: {e}")
except IOError as e:
    logger.error(f"IO error: {e}")
```

Learn more: https://shoulder.dev/learn/python/cwe-396/broad-exception