OWASP / OWASP/Nest

Silent exception handling hides errors and complicates debugging

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#3,449 3 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
bug enhancement
Dominant language
Python
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

## Describe the bug

There are multiple places in the codebase where exceptions are **silently swallowed** using empty `except` blocks. When these errors occur, they fail quietly without any logging or context, making production issues difficult to detect, debug, or trace.

Silent exception handling hides real failures and can lead to incorrect or incomplete data being processed without any visibility.

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## To Reproduce

1. Trigger a code path that raises an exception in one of the affected areas (e.g. malformed data, unexpected input)
2. Observe that the exception is caught
3. No log entry or warning is produced
4. Execution continues without any indication that an error occurred

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## Expected behavior

Exceptions that are intentionally caught should be **logged with appropriate context** (warning or error level), so failures are visible during debugging and in production observability tools, without necessarily interrupting execution.

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## Are you going to work on fixing this?

- [x] Yes
- [ ] No

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## Screenshots

Not applicable.

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## Desktop (please complete the following information)

- OS: Not applicable
- Browser: Not applicable
- Version: Not applicable

---

## Smartphone (please complete the following information)

- Device: Not applicable
- OS: Not applicable
- Browser: Not applicable
- Version: Not applicable

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## Additional context

Examples of silent exception handling currently present in the codebase:

```python
# github/models/common.py
try:
return node.raw_data["node_id"]
except UnknownObjectException:
pass # silent

# owasp/models/common.py
try:
if urlparse(url).netloc == domain:
domain_urls.add(url)
except ValueError:
pass # silent

# slack/models/event.py
try:
command, *args = text.strip().split()
except ValueError:
pass # silent
```

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