Tag Archives: Access of Memory Location Before Start of Buffer

CWE

CWE-786 – Access of Memory Location Before Start of Buffer

Read Time:1 Minute, 39 Second

Description

The software reads or writes to a buffer using an index or pointer that references a memory location prior to the beginning of the buffer.

This typically occurs when a pointer or its index is decremented to a position before the buffer, when pointer arithmetic results in a position before the beginning of the valid memory location, or when a negative index is used.

Modes of Introduction:

Likelihood of Exploit:

 

Related Weaknesses

CWE-119
CWE-119
CWE-119

 

Consequences

Confidentiality: Read Memory

For an out-of-bounds read, the attacker may have access to sensitive information. If the sensitive information contains system details, such as the current buffers position in memory, this knowledge can be used to craft further attacks, possibly with more severe consequences.

Integrity, Availability: Modify Memory, DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart

Out of bounds memory access will very likely result in the corruption of relevant memory, and perhaps instructions, possibly leading to a crash.

Integrity: Modify Memory, Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands

If the corrupted memory can be effectively controlled, it may be possible to execute arbitrary code. If the corrupted memory is data rather than instructions, the system will continue to function with improper changes, possibly in violation of an implicit or explicit policy.

 

Potential Mitigations

CVE References

 

  • CVE-2002-2227
    • Unchecked length of SSLv2 challenge value leads to buffer underflow.
  • CVE-2007-4580
    • Buffer underflow from a small size value with a large buffer (length parameter inconsistency, CWE-130)
  • CVE-2007-1584
    • Buffer underflow from an all-whitespace string, which causes a counter to be decremented before the buffer while looking for a non-whitespace character.
  • CVE-2007-0886
    • Buffer underflow resultant from encoded data that triggers an integer overflow.
  • CVE-2006-6171
    • Product sets an incorrect buffer size limit, leading to “off-by-two” buffer underflow.
  • CVE-2006-4024
    • Negative value is used in a memcpy() operation, leading to buffer underflow.
  • CVE-2004-2620
    • Buffer underflow due to mishandled special characters