CWE-690
Unchecked Return Value to NULL Pointer Dereference
Description
The product does not check for an error after calling a function that can return with a NULL pointer if the function fails, which leads to a resultant NULL pointer dereference.
While unchecked return value weaknesses are not limited to returns of NULL pointers (see the examples in CWE-252), functions often return NULL to indicate an error status. When this error condition is not checked, a NULL pointer dereference can occur.
Parent Weaknesses (ChildOf)
Related Weaknesses
Common Consequences
Scope
Impact
DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart
Scope
Impact
Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands, Read Memory, Modify Memory
CVE-2008-1052Large Content-Length value leads to NULL pointer dereference when malloc fails.
CVE-2006-6227Large message length field leads to NULL pointer dereference when malloc fails.
CVE-2006-2555Parsing routine encounters NULL dereference when input is missing a colon separator.
CVE-2003-1054URI parsing API sets argument to NULL when a parsing failure occurs, such as when the Referer header is missing a hostname, leading to NULL dereference.
CVE-2008-5183chain: unchecked return value can lead to NULL dereference
Applicable Platforms
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