CWE-587

Variant Abstraction Level
Pillar — Highest-level weakness category
Class — Abstract, language-independent
Base — Specific enough to detect
Variant — Tied to specific technology
Compound — Requires multiple weaknesses Draft MITRE CWE Status
Stable — Fully reviewed and complete
Draft — Under development, may change
Incomplete — Partially defined by MITRE
Deprecated — No longer recommended
Obsolete — Replaced by another CWE
Assignment of a Fixed Address to a Pointer

Description

The product sets a pointer to a specific address other than NULL or 0.

Using a fixed address is not portable, because that address will probably not be valid in all environments or platforms.

Consequences

Integrity, Confidentiality, Availability — Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands

If one executes code at a known location, an attacker might be able to inject code there beforehand.

Availability — DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart, Reduce Maintainability, Reduce Reliability

If the code is ported to another platform or environment, the pointer is likely to be invalid and cause a crash.

Confidentiality, Integrity — Read Memory, Modify Memory

The data at a known pointer location can be easily read or influenced by an attacker.

Mitigations

Phase: Implementation

Never set a pointer to a fixed address.

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].