Description
The product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory "belongs" to the code that operates on the new pointer.
Potential Impact
- Integrity: Modify Memory
- Availability: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart
- Integrity: Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands
How to Fix
Architecture and Design
Choose a language that provides automatic memory management.
Implementation
When freeing pointers, be sure to set them to NULL once they are freed. However, the utilization of multiple or complex data structures may lower the usefulness of this strategy.
Detection Methods
- Fuzzing: Fuzz testing (fuzzing) is a powerful technique for generating large numbers of diverse inputs - either randomly or algorithmically - and dynamically invoking the code with those inputs. Even with rand...
- 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 havin...
- Automated Dynamic Analysis: 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]....
Related Weaknesses
References
View on MITRE CWE Database →
