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The C++ Standard, [basic.types], paragraph 9 [ISO/IEC 14882-2014], states the following:

The object representation of an object of type T is the sequence of N unsigned char objects taken up by the object of type T, where N equals sizeof(T). The value representation of an object is the set of bits that hold the value of type T.

The narrow character types (char, signed char, and unsigned char type—as )—as well as some other integral types on specific platforms—have an object representation that soncists consists solely of the bits from the object's value representation. For such types, accessing any of the bits of the value representation is well-defined behavior. This form of object representation allows a programmer to access and modify an object soley solely based on its bit representation, such as by calling std::memcmp() on its object representation.

Other types, such as classes, may not have an object representation composed solely of the bits from the object's value representation. For instance, classes may have bit-field data members, padding inserted between data members, a vtable to support virtual method dispatch, or data members declared with different access privileges. For such types, accessing bits of the object representation that are not part of the object's value representation may result in undefined behavior depending on how those bits are accessed.

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In this noncompliant code example, the complete object representation is accessed when comparing two objects of type S. Per the C++ Standard, [class], paragraph 13 [ISO/IEC 14882-2014], classes may be padded with data to ensure that they are properly aligned in memory. The contents of the padding and the amount of padding added is implementation-defined. This can lead to incorrect results when comparing the object representation of classes instead of the value representation, as the padding may assume different unspecified values for each object instance.

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In this compliant solution, S overloads operator==() to perform a comparison of the value representation of the object:.

struct S {  
  unsigned char buffType;
  int size;
 
  friend bool operator==(const S &lhs, const S &rhs) {
    return lhs.buffType == rhs.buffType &&
           lhs.size == rhs.size;
  }
};
 
void f(const S &s1, const S &s2) {
  if (s1 == s2) {
    // ...
  }
}

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In this compliant solution, the data members of S are cleared explicitly instead of calling std::memset():.

struct S {
  int i, j, k;
 
  // ...

  virtual void f();
  void clear() { i = j = k = 0; }
};

void f() {
  S *s = new S;
  // ...
  s->clear();
  // ...
  s->f(); // ok
}

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The effects of accessing bits of an object representation that are not part of the object's value representation can range from implementation-defined behavior (such as assuming the layout of fields with differing access controls) to code execution vulnerabilities (such as overwriting the vtable pointer).

Automated Detection

Related Vulnerabilities

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

Related Guidelines

Bibliography

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