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where the integer expression size and the declaration of vla are both evaluated at runtime. If the size argument supplied to a variable length array is not a positive integer value, the behavior is undefined. (See undefined behavior 7572.)  Additionally, if the magnitude of the argument is excessive, the program may behave in an unexpected way. An attacker may be able to leverage this behavior to overwrite critical program data [Griffiths 2006]. The programmer must ensure that size arguments to variable length arrays, especially those derived from untrusted data, are in a valid range.

Because variable length arrays are a conditionally supported feature of C11, their use in portable code should be guarded by testing the value of the macro __STDC_NO_VLA__. Implementations that do not support variable length arrays indicate it by setting __STDC_NO_VLA__ to the integer constant 1.

Noncompliant Code Example

In this noncompliant code example, a variable length array of size size is declared. The size is declared as size_t in compliance with INT01-C. Use rsizesize_t or sizersize_t for all integer values representing the size of an object.

#include <stddef.h>

extern void do_work(int *array, size_t size);
 
void func(size_t size) {
  int vla[size];
  do_work(vla, size);
}

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Failure to properly specify the size of a variable length array may allow arbitrary code execution or result in stack exhaustion.

Automated Detection

Related Vulnerabilities

Search for vulnerabilities resulting from the violation of this rule on the CERT website.

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