Description

A class has an inheritance level that is too high, i.e., it has a large number of parent classes.

Extended Description

This issue makes it more difficult to understand and maintain the product, which indirectly affects security by making it more difficult or time-consuming to find and/or fix vulnerabilities. It also might make it easier to introduce vulnerabilities.

While the interpretation of "large number of parent classes" may vary for each product or developer, CISQ recommends a default maximum of 7 parent classes.

This table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined to give an overview of the different insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction.