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On many platforms, dereferencing a null pointer results in abnormal program termination, but this is not required by the standard. See "Clever Attack Exploits Fully-Patched Linux Kernel" [Goodin 2009] for an example of a code execution exploit that resulted from a null pointer dereference.

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This compliant solution ensures that the pointer returned by png_malloc() is not null. It also uses the unsigned type size_t to pass the length parameter, ensuring that negative values are not passed to func().

This solution also ensures that the user_data pointer is not null. Passing a null pointer to memcpy() would produce undefined behavior, even if the number of bytes to copy were 0.  The user_data pointer could be invalid in other ways, such as pointing to freed memory. However there is no portable way to verify that the pointer is valid, other than checking for null.

#include <png.h> /* From libpng */
#include <string.h>

 void func(png_structp png_ptr, size_t length, const void *user_data) { 
  png_charp chunkdata;
  if (length == SIZE_MAX) {
    /* Handle error */
  }
  if (NULL == user_data) {
    /* Handle error */
  }
  chunkdata = (png_charp)png_malloc(png_ptr, length + 1);
  if (NULL == chunkdata) {
    /* Handle error */
  }
  /* ... */
  memcpy(chunkdata, user_data, length);
  /* ... */

 }

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This compliant solution ensures that both input_str and the pointer returned by malloc() are not null.: 

#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
 
void f(const char *input_str) {
  size_t size;
  char *c_str;
 
  if (NULL == input_str) {
    /* Handle error */
  }
  
  size = strlen(input_str) + 1;
  c_str = (char *)malloc(size);
  if (NULL == c_str) {
    /* Handle error */
  }
  memcpy(c_str, input_str, size);
  /* ... */
  free(c_str);
  c_str = NULL;
  /* ... */
}

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The sk pointer is initialized to tun->sk before checking if tun is a null pointer. Because null pointer dereferencing is undefined behavior, the compiler (GCC in this case) can optimize away the if (!tun) check because it is performed after tun->sk is accessed, implying that tun is non-null. As a result, this noncompliant code example is vulnerable to a null pointer dereference exploit, because null pointer dereferencing can be permitted on several platforms, for example, by using mmap(2) with the MAP_FIXED flag on Linux and Mac OS X, or by using the shmat() POSIX function with the SHM_RND flag [Liu 2009].

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This compliant solution eliminates the null pointer deference by initializing sk to tun->sk following the null pointer check:. It also adds assertions to document that certain other pointers must not be null.

static unsigned int tun_chr_poll(struct file *file, poll_table *wait)  {
  assert(file);
  struct tun_file *tfile = file->private_data;
  struct tun_struct *tun = __tun_get(tfile);
  struct sock *sk;
  unsigned int mask = 0;

  if (!tun)
    return POLLERR;
  assert(tun->dev);
  sk = tun->sk;
  assert(sk);
  assert(sk->socket);
  /* The remaining code is omitted because it is unchanged... */

}

Risk Assessment

Dereferencing a null pointer is undefined behavior, typically abnormal program termination. In some situations, however, dereferencing a null pointer can lead to the execution of arbitrary code [Jack 2007], [van Sprundel 2006]. The indicated severity is for this more severe case; on platforms where it is not possible to exploit a null pointer dereference to execute arbitrary code, the actual severity is low.

Automated Detection

Related Vulnerabilities

Search for vulnerabilities resulting from the violation of this rule on the CERT website.

Related Guidelines

Key here (explains table format and definitions)

CERT-CWE Mapping Notes

Key here for mapping notes

CWE-690 and EXP34-C

EXP34-C = Union( CWE-690, list) where list =

• Dereferencing null pointers that were not returned by a function

CWE-252 and EXP34-C

Intersection( CWE-252, EXP34-C) = Ø

EXP34-C is a common consequence of ignoring function return values, but it is a distinct error, and can occur in other scenarios too.

Bibliography Bibliography

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