CWE-401βMissing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime
PUBLISHEDweakness recordMedium
released 2006-07-19 Β· last modified 2026-04-30
Metadata
- CWE ID:
- CWE-401
- Abstraction:
- Variant
- Structure:
- Simple
- Status:
- Draft
- Release Date:
- 2006-07-19
- Latest Modification Date:
- 2026-04-30
Weakness Name
Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime
Description
The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.
Common Consequences
- Scope:
- Availability
- Impact:
- DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart, DoS: Instability, DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU), DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)
- Notes:
- Most memory leaks result in general product reliability problems, but if an attacker can intentionally trigger a memory leak, the attacker might be able to launch a denial of service attack (by crashing or hanging the program) or take advantage of other unexpected program behavior resulting from a low memory condition.
- Scope:
- Other
- Impact:
- Reduce Performance
