Untrusted Pointer Dereference
The product obtains a value from an untrusted source, converts this value to a pointer, and dereferences the resulting pointer.
Description
An attacker can supply a pointer for memory locations that the product is not expecting. If the pointer is dereferenced for a write operation, the attack might allow modification of critical state variables, cause a crash, or execute code. If the dereferencing operation is for a read, then the attack might allow reading of sensitive data, cause a crash, or set a variable to an unexpected value (since the value will be read from an unexpected memory location).
There are several variants of this weakness, including but not necessarily limited to:
The untrusted value is directly invoked as a function call.
In OS kernels or drivers where there is a boundary between "userland" and privileged memory spaces, an untrusted pointer might enter through an API or system call (see CWE-781 for one such example).
Inadvertently accepting the value from an untrusted control sphere when it did not have to be accepted as input at all. This might occur when the code was originally developed to be run by a single user in a non-networked environment, and the code is then ported to or otherwise exposed to a networked environment.
See Also
Weaknesses in this category are related to memory safety.
Weaknesses in this category are related to rules in the Memory Management (MEM) section of the CERT C++ Secure Coding Standard. Since not all rules map to specific wea...
Weaknesses in this category are related to improper handling of pointers.
This view (slice) covers all the elements in CWE.
CWE entries in this view have maintenance notes. Maintenance notes are an indicator that an entry might change significantly in future versions. This view was created...
This view contains a selection of weaknesses that represent the variety of weaknesses that are captured in CWE, at a level of abstraction that is likely to be useful t...
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