CWE-244: Improper Clearing of Heap Memory Before Release ('Heap Inspection')
Description
Using realloc() to resize buffers that store sensitive information can leave the sensitive information exposed to attack, because it is not removed from memory.
Submission Date :
July 19, 2006, midnight
Modification Date :
2023-06-29 00:00:00+00:00
Organization :
MITRE
Extended Description
When sensitive data such as a password or an encryption key is not removed from memory, it could be exposed to an attacker using a "heap inspection" attack that reads the sensitive data using memory dumps or other methods. The realloc() function is commonly used to increase the size of a block of allocated memory. This operation often requires copying the contents of the old memory block into a new and larger block. This operation leaves the contents of the original block intact but inaccessible to the program, preventing the program from being able to scrub sensitive data from memory. If an attacker can later examine the contents of a memory dump, the sensitive data could be exposed.
Example - 1
The following code calls realloc() on a buffer containing sensitive data: There is an attempt to scrub the sensitive data from memory, but realloc() is used, so it could return a pointer to a different part of memory. The memory that was originally allocated for cleartext_buffer could still contain an uncleared copy of the data.
cleartext_buffer = get_secret();...cleartext_buffer = realloc(cleartext_buffer, 1024);...scrub_memory(cleartext_buffer, 1024);
Related Weaknesses
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.
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