CWE-823: Use of Out-of-range Pointer Offset | Glexia
CWE-823 (Use of Out-of-range Pointer Offset) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK context.
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-823: Untrusted pointer offset
Use of Out-of-range Pointer Offset represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Confidentiality: Read Memory: If the untrusted 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 untrusted pointer references a memory location that is not accessible to the program, or points to a location that is "malformed" or larger than expected by a read or write operation, the application may terminate unexpectedly.
- Integrity Confidentiality Availability: Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands Modify Memory: If the untrusted pointer is used in a function call, or points to unexpected data in a write operation, then code execution may be possible.
Developer Pattern
CWE-823 is the kind of defect developers can usually prevent with explicit validation, safer framework defaults, and tests that exercise hostile input or unsafe state transitions.
Automation confidence
high confidence from CWE-823, 4.20.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Official CWE Definition
CWE-823: Use of Out-of-range Pointer Offset
The product performs pointer arithmetic on a valid pointer, but it uses an offset that can point outside of the intended range of valid memory locations for the resulting pointer.
While a pointer can contain a reference to any arbitrary memory location, a program typically only intends to use the pointer to access limited portions of memory, such as contiguous memory used to access an individual array. Programs may use offsets in order to access fields or sub-elements stored within structured data. The offset might be out-of-range if it comes from an untrusted source, is the result of an incorrect calculation, or occurs because of another error. If an attacker can control or influence the offset so that it points outside of the intended boundaries of the structure, then the attacker may be able to read or write to memory locations that are used elsewhere in the product. As a result, the attack might change the state of the product as accessed through program variables, cause a crash or instable behavior, and possibly lead to code execution.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- Missing validation
- Unsafe defaults
- Insufficient authorization or memory-safety invariant
Remediation
- Use safe APIs
- Centralize the control
- Add regression tests
- Review logs and telemetry for attempted abuse
Detection
- 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: 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].
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
Related CWEs
No related CWE relationships are published yet.
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.