Description

The product uses an unsigned primitive and performs a cast to a signed primitive, which can produce an unexpected value if the value of the unsigned primitive can not be represented using a signed primitive.

Extended Description

Although less frequent an issue than signed-to-unsigned conversion, unsigned-to-signed conversion can be the perfect precursor to dangerous buffer underwrite conditions that allow attackers to move down the stack where they otherwise might not have access in a normal buffer overflow condition. Buffer underwrites occur frequently when large unsigned values are cast to signed values, and then used as indexes into a buffer or for pointer arithmetic.

This table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined to give an overview of the different insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction.