Vulnerability Mapping:
ALLOWEDThis CWE ID may be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities Abstraction: BaseBase - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.
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Description
In C and C++, one may often accidentally refer to the wrong memory due to the semantics of when math operations are implicitly scaled.
Common Consequences
This table specifies different individual consequences associated with the weakness. The Scope identifies the application security area that is violated, while the Impact describes the negative technical impact that arises if an adversary succeeds in exploiting this weakness. The Likelihood provides information about how likely the specific consequence is expected to be seen relative to the other consequences in the list. For example, there may be high likelihood that a weakness will be exploited to achieve a certain impact, but a low likelihood that it will be exploited to achieve a different impact.
Scope
Impact
Likelihood
Confidentiality Integrity
Technical Impact: Read Memory; Modify Memory
Incorrect pointer scaling will often result in buffer overflow conditions. Confidentiality can be compromised if the weakness is in the context of a buffer over-read or under-read.
Potential Mitigations
Phase: Architecture and Design
Use a platform with high-level memory abstractions.
Phase: Implementation
Always use array indexing instead of direct pointer manipulation.
Phase: Architecture and Design
Use technologies for preventing buffer overflows.
Relationships
This table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined as ChildOf, ParentOf, MemberOf and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as PeerOf and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar weaknesses that the user may want to explore.
Relevant to the view "Research Concepts" (CWE-1000)
Nature
Type
ID
Name
ChildOf
Pillar - a weakness that is the most abstract type of weakness and represents a theme for all class/base/variant weaknesses related to it. A Pillar is different from a Category as a Pillar is still technically a type of weakness that describes a mistake, while a Category represents a common characteristic used to group related things.
This table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined as ChildOf, ParentOf, MemberOf and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as PeerOf and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar weaknesses that the user may want to explore.
Relevant to the view "Software Development" (CWE-699)
Nature
Type
ID
Name
MemberOf
Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.
The different Modes of Introduction provide information about how and when this weakness may be introduced. The Phase identifies a point in the life cycle at which introduction may occur, while the Note provides a typical scenario related to introduction during the given phase.
Phase
Note
Implementation
Programmers may try to index from a pointer by adding a number of bytes. This is incorrect because C and C++ implicitly scale the operand by the size of the data type.
Applicable Platforms
This listing shows possible areas for which the given weakness could appear. These may be for specific named Languages, Operating Systems, Architectures, Paradigms, Technologies, or a class of such platforms. The platform is listed along with how frequently the given weakness appears for that instance.
Languages
C (Undetermined Prevalence)
C++ (Undetermined Prevalence)
Likelihood Of Exploit
Medium
Demonstrative Examples
Example 1
This example attempts to calculate the position of the second byte of a pointer.
(bad code)
Example Language: C
int *p = x; char * second_char = (char *)(p + 1);
In this example, second_char is intended to point to the second byte of p. But, adding 1 to p actually adds sizeof(int) to p, giving a result that is incorrect (3 bytes off on 32-bit platforms). If the resulting memory address is read, this could potentially be an information leak. If it is a write, it could be a security-critical write to unauthorized memory-- whether or not it is a buffer overflow. Note that the above code may also be wrong in other ways, particularly in a little endian environment.
Memberships
This MemberOf Relationships table shows additional CWE Categories and Views that reference this weakness as a member. This information is often useful in understanding where a weakness fits within the context of external information sources.
Nature
Type
ID
Name
MemberOf
Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.
View - a subset of CWE entries that provides a way of examining CWE content. The two main view structures are Slices (flat lists) and Graphs (containing relationships between entries).
(this CWE ID could be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities)
Reason: Acceptable-Use
Rationale:
This CWE entry is at the Base level of abstraction, which is a preferred level of abstraction for mapping to the root causes of vulnerabilities.
Comments:
Carefully read both the name and description to ensure that this mapping is an appropriate fit. Do not try to 'force' a mapping to a lower-level Base/Variant simply to comply with this preferred level of abstraction.
Taxonomy Mappings
Mapped Taxonomy Name
Node ID
Fit
Mapped Node Name
CLASP
Unintentional pointer scaling
CERT C Secure Coding
ARR39-C
Exact
Do not add or subtract a scaled integer to a pointer
[REF-62] Mark Dowd, John McDonald
and Justin Schuh. "The Art of Software Security Assessment". Chapter 6, "Pointer Arithmetic", Page 277. 1st Edition. Addison Wesley. 2006.
Description
This table specifies different individual consequences associated with the weakness. The Scope identifies the application security area that is violated, while the Impact describes the negative technical impact that arises if an adversary succeeds in exploiting this weakness. The Likelihood provides information about how likely the specific consequence is expected to be seen relative to the other consequences in the list. For example, there may be high likelihood that a weakness will be exploited to achieve a certain impact, but a low likelihood that it will be exploited to achieve a different impact.
