CWE-416: CWE-416: Use After Free

CWE-416: CWE-416: Use After Free is a Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) entry maintained by MITRE. Description

Yes. CWE-416 ranked #16 in the CWE Top 25 for 2024, associated with 1,151 CVEs that year. The CWE Top 25 highlights the most common and impactful software weaknesses based on real-world vulnerability data.

If exploited, CWE-416 (CWE-416: Use After Free) it can compromise Modify Memory, DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart, Read Memory and Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands, leading to outcomes such as Scope: Integrity The use of previously freed memory may corrupt valid data, if the memory area in question has been allocated and used properly elsewhere., Scope: Availability If chunk consolidation occurs after the use of previously freed data, the process may crash when invalid data is used as chunk information., Scope: Confidentiality Read operations on freed memory can sometimes leak sensitive information instead of causing a crash and Scope: Integrity.

Recommended mitigations for CWE-416 include: Strategy: Language Selection Choose a language that provides automatic memory management. Strategy: Attack Surface Reduction When freeing pointers, be sure to set them to NULL once they are freed. However, the utilization of multiple or complex data structures may lower the usefulness of this strategy. Effectiveness: Defense in Depth Note: If a bug causes an attempted access of this pointer, then a NULL dereference could still lead to a crash or other unexpected behavior, but it will reduce or eliminate the risk of code execution.

CWE-416 commonly affects Languages. Note that weaknesses are often language-agnostic patterns, so secure coding practices apply broadly.

A CWE (Common Weakness Enumeration) like CWE-416 describes a category of software weakness — the underlying flaw type. A CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) identifies a specific, real-world vulnerability in a particular product. In short, a CWE is the kind of mistake, and a CVE is an instance of that mistake being found in software.