Attempt to Access Child of a Non-structure Pointer
Casting a non-structure type to a structure type and accessing a field can lead to memory access errors or data corruption.
Demonstrations
The following examples help to illustrate the nature of this weakness and describe methods or techniques which can be used to mitigate the risk.
Note that the examples here are by no means exhaustive and any given weakness may have many subtle varieties, each of which may require different detection methods or runtime controls.
Example One
The following example demonstrates the weakness.
struct foo
{
int i;
}
...
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
*foo = (struct foo *)main;
foo->i = 2;
return foo->i;
}See Also
This category identifies Software Fault Patterns (SFPs) within the Faulty Pointer Use cluster (SFP7).
Weaknesses in this category are related to incorrectly written expressions within code.
Weaknesses in this category are related to improper handling of pointers.
This view (slice) covers all the elements in CWE.
This view (slice) lists weaknesses that can be introduced during implementation.
This view (slice) lists weaknesses that can be introduced during design.
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