MEM30-C. Do not access freed memory

Accessing memory once it is freed may corrupt the data structures used to manage the heap. References to memory that has been deallocated are referred to as dangling pointers. Accessing a dangling pointer can lead to security vulnerabilities.

When memory is freed, its contents may remain intact and accessible. This is because it is at the memory manager's discretion when to reallocate or recycle the freed chunk. The data at the freed location may appear valid. However, this can change unexpectedly, leading to unintended program behavior. As a result, it is necessary to guarantee that memory is not written to or read from once it is freed.

Non-Compliant Code Example

This example from Kernighan and Ritchie [[Kernighan 88]] shows both the incorrect and correct techniques for deleting items from a linked list. The incorrect solution, clearly marked as wrong in the book, is bad because p is freed before the p->next is executed, so p->next reads memory that has already been freed.

for (p = head; p != NULL; p = p->next)     /* WRONG */
    free(p);

Compliant Solution

Kernighan and Ritchie also show the correct solution. To correct this error, a reference to p->next is stored in q before freeing p.

for (p = head; p != NULL; p = q) {
  q = p->next;
  free(p);
}
head = NULL;

Non-Compliant Code Example

In this example, buff is written to after it has been freed. These vulnerabilities can be relatively easily exploited to run arbitrary code with the permissions of the vulnerable process and are seldom this obvious. Typically, allocations and frees are far removed, making it difficult to recognize and diagnose these problems.

int main(int argc, char const *argv[]) {
  char *buff;

  buff = (char *)malloc(BUFSIZE);
  if (!buff) {
     /* handle error condition */
  }
  /* ... */
  free(buff);
  /* ... */
  strncpy(buff, argv[1], BUFSIZE-1);
}

Compliant Solution

Do not free the memory until it is no longer required.

int main(int argc, char const *argv[]) {
  char *buff;

  buff = (char *)malloc(BUFSIZE);
  if (!buff) {
     /* handle error condition */
  }
  /* ... */
  strncpy(buff, argv[1], BUFSIZE-1);
  /* ... */
  free(buff);
}

Risk Assessment

Reading memory that has already been freed can lead to abnormal program termination and denial-of-service attacks. Writing memory that has already been freed can lead to the execution of arbitrary code with the permissions of the vulnerable process.

Automated Detection

The LDRA tool suite V 7.6.0 is able to detect violations of this rule.

Fortify SCA Version 5.0 is able to detect violations of this rule.

Compass/ROSE can detect violations of the rule, except for cases such as the for loop in the first example.

Related Vulnerabilities

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

References

[[ISO/IEC 9899:1999]] Section 7.20.3.2, "The free function"
[[ISO/IEC PDTR 24772]] "DCM Dangling references to stack frames" and "XYK Dangling Reference to Heap"
[[Kernighan 88]] Section 7.8.5, "Storage Management"
[[MISRA 04]] Rule 17.6
[[MITRE 07]] CWE ID 416, "Use After Free"
[[OWASP Freed Memory]]
[[Seacord 05]] Chapter 4, "Dynamic Memory Management"
[[Viega 05]] Section 5.2.19, "Using freed memory"

MEM10-A. Use a pointer validation function      08. Memory Management (MEM)       MEM31-C. Free dynamically allocated memory exactly once