COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONDraft

CWE-466

Return of Pointer Value Outside of Expected Range

A function can return a pointer to memory that is outside of the buffer that the pointer is expected to reference.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

A function can return a pointer to memory that is outside of the buffer that the pointer is expected to reference.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Read MemoryModify Memory

Affected security scopes: Confidentiality, Integrity

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

  • Follow secure coding guidelines for input handling and boundary checking.
  • Enforce strict security reviews and automated static analysis (SAST) checks.

Verification

How is it detected?

Automated Static Analysis

Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)

Automated Dynamic Analysis

Moderate
Use tools that are integrated during compilation to insert runtime error-checking mechanisms related to memory safety errors, such as AddressSanitizer (ASan) for C/C++ [REF-1518].

Crafted inputs are necessary to reach the code containing the error, such as generated by fuzzers. Also, these tools may reduce performance, and they only report the error condition - not the original mistake that led to the error.