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
A product calculates or uses an incorrect maximum or minimum value that is 1 more, or 1 less, than the correct value.
Alternate Terms
off-by-five
An "off-by-five" error was reported for sudo in 2002 (CVE-2002-0184), but that is more like a "length calculation" error.
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.
This weakness will generally lead to undefined behavior and therefore crashes. In the case of overflows involving loop index variables, the likelihood of infinite loops is also high.
Modify Memory
Scope: Integrity
If the value in question is important to data (as opposed to flow), simple data corruption has occurred. Also, if the wrap around results in other conditions such as buffer overflows, further memory corruption may occur.
Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands; Bypass Protection Mechanism
Scope: Confidentiality, Availability, Access Control
This weakness can sometimes trigger buffer overflows which can be used to execute arbitrary code. This is usually outside the scope of a program's implicit security policy.
Potential Mitigations
Phase(s)
Mitigation
Implementation
When copying character arrays or using character manipulation methods, the correct size parameter must be used to account for the null terminator that needs to be added at the end of the array. Some examples of functions susceptible to this weakness in C include strcpy(), strncpy(), strcat(), strncat(), printf(), sprintf(), scanf() and sscanf().
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" (View-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.
Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource.
Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer
CanPrecede
Base - 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.
Base - 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.
Relevant to the view "Weaknesses for Simplified Mapping of Published Vulnerabilities" (View-1003)
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.
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
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)
Class: Not Language-Specific
(Undetermined Prevalence)
Demonstrative Examples
Example 1
The following code allocates memory for a maximum number of widgets. It then gets a user-specified number of widgets, making sure that the user does not request too many. It then initializes the elements of the array using InitializeWidget(). Because the number of widgets can vary for each request, the code inserts a NULL pointer to signify the location of the last widget.
(bad code)
Example Language: C
int i; unsigned int numWidgets; Widget **WidgetList;
However, this code contains an off-by-one calculation error (CWE-193). It allocates exactly enough space to contain the specified number of widgets, but it does not include the space for the NULL pointer. As a result, the allocated buffer is smaller than it is supposed to be (CWE-131). So if the user ever requests MAX_NUM_WIDGETS, there is an out-of-bounds write (CWE-787) when the NULL is assigned. Depending on the environment and compilation settings, this could cause memory corruption.
Example 2
In this example, the code does not account for the terminating null character, and it writes one byte beyond the end of the buffer.
The first call to strncat() appends up to 20 characters plus a terminating null character to fullname[]. There is plenty of allocated space for this, and there is no weakness associated with this first call. However, the second call to strncat() potentially appends another 20 characters. The code does not account for the terminating null character that is automatically added by strncat(). This terminating null character would be written one byte beyond the end of the fullname[] buffer. Therefore an off-by-one error exists with the second strncat() call, as the third argument should be 19.
When using a function like strncat() one must leave a free byte at the end of the buffer for a terminating null character, thus avoiding the off-by-one weakness. Additionally, the last argument to strncat() is the number of characters to append, which must be less than the remaining space in the buffer. Be careful not to just use the total size of the buffer.
The Off-by-one error can also be manifested when reading characters from a character array within a for loop that has an incorrect continuation condition.
(bad code)
Example Language: C
#define PATH_SIZE 60
char filename[PATH_SIZE];
for(i=0; i<=PATH_SIZE; i++) {
char c = fgetc(stdin);
if (c == EOF) {
filename[i] = '\0';
}
else {
filename[i] = c;
}
}
If i reaches PATH_SIZE, then the loop continues. However, filename[PATH_SIZE] is actually out of bounds, since the valid index range is from 0 to PATH_SIZE-1.
In this case, the correct continuation condition is shown below.
(good code)
Example Language: C
for(i=0; i<PATH_SIZE; i++) { ...
Example 4
As another example the Off-by-one error can occur when using the sprintf library function to copy a string variable to a formatted string variable and the original string variable comes from an untrusted source. As in the following example where a local function, setFilename is used to store the value of a filename to a database but first uses sprintf to format the filename. The setFilename function includes an input parameter with the name of the file that is used as the copy source in the sprintf function. The sprintf function will copy the file name to a char array of size 20 and specifies the format of the new variable as 16 characters followed by the file extension .dat.
However this will cause an Off-by-one error if the original filename is exactly 16 characters or larger because the format of 16 characters with the file extension is exactly 20 characters and does not take into account the required null terminator that will be placed at the end of the string.
Selected Observed
Examples
Note: this is a curated list of examples for users to understand the variety of ways in which this
weakness can be introduced. It is not a complete list of all CVEs that are related to this CWE entry.
Off-by-one buffer overflow in function usd by server allows local users to execute arbitrary code as the server user via .htaccess files with long entries.
Off-by-one error in function used in many products leads to a buffer overflow during pathname management, as demonstrated using multiple commands in an FTP server.
Chain: security monitoring product has an off-by-one error that leads to unexpected length values, triggering an assertion.
Detection
Methods
Method
Details
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.)
Effectiveness: High
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.
CERT C++ Secure Coding Section 07 - Characters and Strings (STR)
MemberOf
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 may 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.
Notes
Relationship
This is not always a buffer overflow. For example, an off-by-one error could be a factor in a partial comparison, a read from the wrong memory location, an incorrect conditional, etc.
Taxonomy
Mappings
Mapped Taxonomy Name
Node ID
Fit
Mapped Node Name
PLOVER
Off-by-one Error
CERT C Secure Coding
STR31-C
Guarantee that storage for strings has sufficient space for character data and the null terminator
Michael Howard, David LeBlanc and John Viega. "24 Deadly Sins of Software Security". "Sin 5: Buffer Overruns." Page 89. McGraw-Hill. 2010.
[REF-62]
Mark Dowd, John McDonald and Justin Schuh. "The Art of Software Security Assessment". Chapter 5, "Off-by-One Errors", Page 180. 1st Edition. Addison Wesley. 2006.
Content
History
Submissions
Submission Date
Submitter
Organization
2006-07-19
(CWE Draft 3, 2006-07-19)
PLOVER
Contributions
Contribution Date
Contributor
Organization
2024-07-20
(CWE 4.17, 2025-04-03)
Jason Xu
Reported compilation error with demonstrative example.
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.
