CWE-587 Detail

CWE-587

Assignment of a Fixed Address to a Pointer
Draft
2006-12-15
00h00 +00:00
2025-12-11
00h00 +00:00
CWE Mitre.org
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Name: Assignment of a Fixed Address to a Pointer

The product sets a pointer to a specific address other than NULL or 0.

CWE Description

Using a fixed address is not portable, because that address will probably not be valid in all environments or platforms.

General Informations

Modes Of Introduction

Implementation

Applicable Platforms

Language

Class: Memory-Unsafe (Undetermined)
Name: C (Undetermined)
Name: C++ (Undetermined)
Name: C# (Undetermined)
Class: Assembly (Undetermined)

Common Consequences

Scope Impact Likelihood
Integrity
Confidentiality
Availability		Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands

Note: If one executes code at a known location, an attacker might be able to inject code there beforehand.
AvailabilityDoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart, Reduce Maintainability, Reduce Reliability

Note: If the code is ported to another platform or environment, the pointer is likely to be invalid and cause a crash.
Confidentiality
Integrity		Read Memory, Modify Memory

Note: The data at a known pointer location can be easily read or influenced by an attacker.

Potential Mitigations

Phases : Implementation
Never set a pointer to a fixed address.

Detection Methods

Automated Static Analysis

Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)

Automated Dynamic Analysis

Use tools that are integrated during compilation to insert runtime error-checking mechanisms related to memory safety errors, such as AddressSanitizer (ASan) for C/C++ [REF-1518].
Effectiveness : Moderate

Vulnerability Mapping Notes

Justification : This CWE entry is at the Variant level of abstraction, which is a preferred level of abstraction for mapping to the root causes of vulnerabilities.
Comment : Carefully read both the name and description to ensure that this mapping is an appropriate fit. Do not try to 'force' a mapping to a lower-level Base/Variant simply to comply with this preferred level of abstraction.

References

REF-1518

AddressSanitizer
https://clang.llvm.org/docs/AddressSanitizer.html

Submission

Name Organization Date Date release Version
CWE Content Team MITRE 2006-12-15 +00:00 2006-12-15 +00:00 Draft 5

Modifications

Name Organization Date Comment
Eric Dalci Cigital 2008-07-01 +00:00 updated Time_of_Introduction
KDM Analytics 2008-08-01 +00:00 added/updated white box definitions
CWE Content Team MITRE 2008-09-08 +00:00 updated Applicable_Platforms, Description, Relationships, Other_Notes, Weakness_Ordinalities
CWE Content Team MITRE 2008-11-24 +00:00 updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
CWE Content Team MITRE 2009-03-10 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2009-07-27 +00:00 updated Common_Consequences, Description, Other_Notes
CWE Content Team MITRE 2011-06-01 +00:00 updated Common_Consequences
CWE Content Team MITRE 2011-09-13 +00:00 updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
CWE Content Team MITRE 2012-05-11 +00:00 updated Demonstrative_Examples, Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2014-07-30 +00:00 updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
CWE Content Team MITRE 2017-11-08 +00:00 updated Applicable_Platforms, Taxonomy_Mappings, White_Box_Definitions
CWE Content Team MITRE 2019-01-03 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2021-03-15 +00:00 updated Common_Consequences, Weakness_Ordinalities
CWE Content Team MITRE 2023-01-31 +00:00 updated Description
CWE Content Team MITRE 2023-04-27 +00:00 updated Relationships, Time_of_Introduction, Type
CWE Content Team MITRE 2023-06-29 +00:00 updated Mapping_Notes
CWE Content Team MITRE 2024-02-29 +00:00 updated Demonstrative_Examples
CWE Content Team MITRE 2025-09-09 +00:00 updated Affected_Resources, Functional_Areas
CWE Content Team MITRE 2025-12-11 +00:00 updated Applicable_Platforms, Detection_Factors, References
The information presented on CVE Find originates from several carefully selected reference sources. CVE data is provided by MITRE Corporation and the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). The Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog is sourced from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), while EPSS scores come from FIRST.org. Additionally, data regarding software weaknesses (CWE) and common attack patterns (CAPEC) is maintained by MITRE Corporation, and information on hardware and software configurations (CPE) is provided by the NVD.