COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONDraft

CWE-680

Integer Overflow to Buffer Overflow

The product performs a calculation to determine how much memory to allocate, but an integer overflow can occur that causes less memory to be allocated than expected, leading to a buffer overflow.

Abstraction

Compound

Structure

Chain

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product performs a calculation to determine how much memory to allocate, but an integer overflow can occur that causes less memory to be allocated than expected, leading to a buffer overflow.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Modify MemoryDoS: Crash, Exit, or RestartExecute Unauthorized Code or Commands

Affected security scopes: Integrity, Availability, Confidentiality

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

High
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.