VulnScan

CWE-908: Use of Uninitialized Resource

What is CWE-908?

MITRE CWE

The product uses or accesses a resource that has not been initialized.

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Official definition

MITRE CWE

The product uses or accesses a resource that has not been initialized.

When a resource has not been properly initialized, the product may behave unexpectedly. This may lead to a crash or invalid memory access, but the consequences vary depending on the type of resource and how it is used within the product.

Detailed description

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Characteristics

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Modes of introduction

  • Implementation

Common consequences

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  • Confidentiality

    Read Memory, Read Application Data

    When reusing a resource such as memory or a program variable, the original contents of that resource may not be cleared before it is sent to an untrusted party.

  • Availability

    DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart

    The uninitialized resource may contain values that cause program flow to change in ways that the programmer did not intend.

Mitigations

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  • ImplementationExplicitly initialize the resource before use. If this is performed through an API function or standard procedure, follow all required steps.
  • ImplementationPay close attention to complex conditionals that affect initialization, since some branches might not perform the initialization.
  • ImplementationAvoid race conditions (CWE-362) during initialization routines.
  • Build and CompilationRun or compile the product with settings that generate warnings about uninitialized variables or data.

Detection methods

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  • Automated Static AnalysisAutomated 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

Representative vulnerabilities

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These examples illustrate this CWE entry and are not an exhaustive list of related vulnerabilities.

  • CVE-2019-9805Chain: Creation of the packet client occurs before initialization is complete (CWE-696) resulting in a read from uninitialized memory (CWE-908), causing memory corruption.
  • CVE-2008-4197Use of uninitialized memory may allow code execution.
  • CVE-2008-2934Free of an uninitialized pointer leads to crash and possible code execution.
  • CVE-2008-0063Product does not clear memory contents when generating an error message, leading to information leak.
  • CVE-2008-0062Lack of initialization triggers NULL pointer dereference or double-free.
  • CVE-2008-0081Uninitialized variable leads to code execution in popular desktop application.
  • CVE-2008-3688Chain: Uninitialized variable leads to infinite loop.
  • CVE-2008-3475Chain: Improper initialization leads to memory corruption.
  • CVE-2005-1036Chain: Bypass of access restrictions due to improper authorization (CWE-862) of a user results from an improperly initialized (CWE-909) I/O permission bitmap
  • CVE-2008-3597Chain: game server can access player data structures before initialization has happened leading to NULL dereference
  • CVE-2009-2692Chain: Use of an unimplemented network socket operation pointing to an uninitialized handler function (CWE-456) causes a crash because of a null pointer dereference (CWE-476)
  • CVE-2009-0949Chain: improper initialization of memory can lead to NULL dereference
  • CVE-2009-3620Chain: some unprivileged ioctls do not verify that a structure has been initialized before invocation, leading to NULL dereference

Sources and references

References

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