CAPEC-129 Pointer Manipulation

CAPEC ID: 129

CAPEC-129 Metadata

Likelihood of Attack

High

Typical Severity

Medium

Overview

Summary

This attack pattern involves an adversary manipulating a pointer within a target application resulting in the application accessing an unintended memory location. This can result in the crashing of the application or, for certain pointer values, access to data that would not normally be possible or the execution of arbitrary code. Since pointers are simply integer variables, Integer Attacks may often be used in Pointer Attacks.

Prerequisites

The target application must have a pointer variable that the attacker can influence to hold an arbitrary value.

Potential Solutions / Mitigations

No specific solutions listed.

Related Weaknesses (CWE)

CWE ID Description
CWE-682 Incorrect Calculation
CWE-822 Untrusted Pointer Dereference
CWE-823 Use of Out-of-range Pointer Offset

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