CWE-761βFree of Pointer not at Start of Buffer
PUBLISHEDweakness record
released 2009-05-27 Β· last modified 2026-04-30
Metadata
Weakness Name
Free of Pointer not at Start of Buffer
Description
The product calls free() on a pointer to a memory resource that was allocated on the heap, but the pointer is not at the start of the buffer.
This can cause the product to crash, or in some cases, modify critical program variables or execute code. This weakness often occurs when the memory is allocated explicitly on the heap with one of the malloc() family functions and free() is called, but pointer arithmetic has caused the pointer to be in the interior or end of the buffer.