CWE-824: Access of Uninitialized Pointer
Description
The product accesses or uses a pointer that has not been initialized.
If the pointer contains an uninitialized value, then the value might not point to a valid memory location. This could cause the product to read from or write to unexpected memory locations, leading to a denial of service. If the uninitialized pointer is used as a function call, then arbitrary functions could be invoked. If an attacker can influence the portion of uninitialized memory that is contained in the pointer, this weakness could be leveraged to execute code or perform other attacks. Depending on memory layout, associated memory management behaviors, and product operation, the attacker might be able to influence the contents of the uninitialized pointer, thus gaining more fine-grained control of the memory location to be accessed.
- Abstraction
- BaseA weakness specific enough to point to detection and prevention methods.
- Likelihood of exploit
- Not rated by MITRE
- Status
- Incomplete
Common consequences
- Confidentiality
Read Memory
If the uninitialized pointer is used in a read operation, an attacker might be able to read sensitive portions of memory.
- Availability
DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart
If the uninitialized pointer references a memory location that is not accessible to the product, or points to a location that is malformed (such as NULL) or larger than expected by a read or write operation, then a crash may occur.
- IntegrityConfidentialityAvailability
Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands
If the uninitialized pointer is used in a function call, or points to unexpected data in a write operation, then code execution may be possible.
Related weaknesses
CAPEC attack patterns that exploit it
CWE 4.20 links no CAPEC attack pattern to this weakness.