EXP11-J. Never dereference null pointers

Null pointer dereferencing occurs when a null variable is treated as if it were a valid object or field and is used without checking its state. This condition results in a NullPointerException, which could result in denial of service. For additional information, see the related guideline "EXC15-J. Do not catch NullPointerException."

Noncompliant Code Example

This noncompliant example shows a bug in Tomcat version 4.1.24, initially discovered by Reasoning [[Reasoning 2003]]. The cardinality method was designed to return the number of occurrences of object obj in collection col. One valid use of the cardinality method is to determine how many objects in the collection are null. However, because membership in the collection is checked with the expression obj.equals(elt), a null pointer dereference is guaranteed whenever obj is null.

public static int cardinality(Object obj, final Collection col) {
  int count = 0;
  Iterator it = col.iterator();
  while (it.hasNext()) {
    Object elt = it.next();
    if ((null == obj && null == elt) || obj.equals(elt)) {  // null pointer dereference
      count++;
    }
  }
  return count;
}

Compliant Solution

This compliant solution eliminates the null pointer dereference.

public static int cardinality(Object obj, final Collection col) {
  int count = 0;
  Iterator it = col.iterator();
  while (it.hasNext()) {
    Object elt = it.next();
    if ((null == obj && null == elt) || 
        (null != obj && obj.equals(elt))) {
      count++;
    }
  }
  return count;
}

Automated Detection

Null pointer dereferences can happen in path-dependent ways. Limitations of automatic detection tools can require manual inspection of code [[Hovemeyer 2007]] to detect instances of null pointer dereferences. Annotations for method parameters that must be non-null can reduce the need for manual inspection by assisting automated null pointer dereference detection.

Risk Assessment

Dereferencing a null pointer can lead to a denial of service. For example, Java Web Start applications and applets particular to JDK version 1.6, prior to update 4, were affected by a bug that had some noteworthy security consequences. A NullPointerException was generated in some isolated cases when the application or applet attempted to establish an HTTPS connection with a server [[SDN 2008]]. The failure to establish a secure HTTPS connection with the server caused a denial of service: clients were temporarily forced to use an insecure http channel for data exchange. In multithreaded programs, null pointer dereferences can violate cache coherency policies and can cause resource leaks.

Automated Detection

The Coverity Prevent Version 5.0 FORWARD_NULL checker can detect the instance where reference is checked against null but then dereferenced anyway.

Related Guidelines

MITRE CWE: CWE-479
CERT C Secure Coding Standard: "EXP34-C. Do not dereference null pointers"
CERT C++ Secure Coding Standard: "EXP34-CPP. Ensure a null pointer is not dereferenced"

Bibliography

EXP10-J. Ensure that autoboxed values have the intended type      02. Expressions (EXP)      EXP12-J. Use the same type for the second and third operands in conditional expressions