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abnormal terminationend
abnormal terminationend

abnormal termination [Open Group 2008]
Abnormal termination occurs when requested by the abort() function or when some signals are received. See also normal terminationend [ISO/IEC/IEEE 24765:2010]
Termination of a process prior to completion.

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abnormal termination
abnormal termination
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abnormal program termination
abnormal program termination

abnormal program termination See abnormal end.

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analyzer
analyzer

analyzer
[ISO/IEC TS 17961:2013]
Mechanism that diagnoses analyzeranalyzeranalyzer
Mechanism that diagnoses coding flaws in software programs.

NOTE
Analyzers may include static analysis tools, tools within a compiler suite, or tools in other contexts.

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async-signal-safe
async-signal-safe

async-signal-safe function [ISO/IEC 9945:2008]
A function that may be invoked, without restriction, from signal-catching functions. No function (defined in ISO/IEC 9945) is async-signal-safe unless explicitly described as such. See also asynchronous-safe.

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asynchronous-safe
asynchronous-safe
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asynchronous-safe function
asynchronous-safe function
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async-signal-safe
async-signal-safe

asynchronous-safe function [GNU Pth]
A function is asynchronous-safe, or asynchronous-signal safe, if it can be called safely and without side effects from within a signal handler context. That is, it must be able to be interrupted at any point to run linearly out of sequence without causing an inconsistent state. It must also function properly when global data might itself be in an inconsistent state. Some asynchronous-safe operations are listed here:

  • call Call the signal() function to reinstall a signal handler.
  • unconditionally Unconditionally modify a volatile sig_atomic_t variable (as modification to this type is atomic).
  • call Call the _Exit() function to immediately terminate program execution.
  • invoke Invoke an asynchronous-safe function, as specified by your the implementation.

Few functions are portably asynchronous-safe. If a function performs any other operations, it is probably not portably asynchronous-safe.

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availability
availability

availability [IEEE Std 610.12 1990]
The degree to which a system or component is operational and accessible when required for use. Often expressed as a probability.

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conforming programconforming program
conforming [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
Conforming programs may depend on nonportable features of a conforming implementation. Anchordata flow analysisdata flow analysisdata flow analysis
Tracking of value constraints along nonexcluded paths through the code.
condition predicate
condition predicate

condition predicate
An expression constructed from the variables of a function that must be true for a thread to be allowed to continue execution.

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conforming program
conforming program

conforming [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
Conforming programs may depend on nonportable features of a conforming implementation.

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critical sections
critical sections

critical sections

Code that accesses shared data and would otherwise be protected from data races.

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dangling pointer
dangling pointer

dangling pointer

A pointer to deallocated memory.

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data flow analysis
data flow analysis

data flow analysis

Tracking of value constraints along nonexcluded paths through the code.

NOTE
Tracking NOTE 1 Tracking can be performed intraprocedurally, with various assumptions made about what happens at function call boundaries, or interprocedurally, where values are tracked flowing into function calls (directly or indirectly) as arguments and flowing back out either as return values or indirectly through arguments.
NOTE 2 Data flow analysis may or may not track values flowing into or out of the heap or take into account global variables. When this specification refers to values flowing, the key point is contrast with variables or expressions , because a given variable or expression may hold different values along different paths , and a given value may be held by multiple variables or expressions along a path.

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data race
data race

data race [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
The execution of a program contains a data race if it contains two conflicting actions in different threads, at least one of which is not atomic, and neither happens before the other. Any such data race results in undefined behavior.

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denial-of-service
denial-of-service
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dos
dos

denial-of-service attack
Also DoS attack. An attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users.

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diagnostic message
diagnostic message

diagnostic message
 [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
According to the C11 standard, a diagnostic message is a message A message belonging to an implementation-defined subset of the implementation’s message output. A diagnostic message may indicate a constraint violation , or a valid but questionable language construct. Messages typically include the file name and line number pointing to the offending code construct. In addition, implementations also often indicate the severity of the problem. While Although the C standard doesn't Standard does not specify any such requirement, the most severe problems often cause implementations to fail to successfully translate a translation unit. Diagnostics output in such cases are termed errors. Other problems may cause implementations to simply issue a warning message and continue translating the rest of the program. Anchorerrorerror

error
A diagnostic message generated when source code is encountered that prevents an implementation from translating a translation unit.

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severe problems often cause implementations to fail to fully translate a translation unit. Diagnostics output in such cases are termed errors. Other problems may cause implementations simply to issue a warning message and continue translating the rest of the program. See error message and warning message.

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double-free vulnerability
double-free vulnerability

double-free vulnerability
An exploitable error resulting from the same allocated object being freed more than once.

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error
error
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error message
error message

error message

A diagnostic message generated when source code is encountered that prevents an implementation from translating a translation unit. See diagnostic message and warning message.

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error tolerance
error tolerance

error tolerance

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fail safe [IEEE Std 610.12 1990]
Pertaining to a system or component that automatically places itself in a safe operating mode in the event of a failure—for example, a traffic light that reverts to blinking red in all directions when normal operation fails.

Anchorfail softfail soft fail soft [IEEE Std 610.12 1990]
Pertaining to a system or component that continues to provide partial operational capability in the event of certain failures—for example, a traffic light that continues to alternate between red and green if the yellow light failsThe ability of a system or component to continue normal operation despite the presence of erroneous inputs.

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fatal diagnosticexploitfatal diagnostic
fatal diagnostic
A diagnostic message which causes an implementation not to perform the translation
exploit

exploit [ISO/IEC TS 17961:2013]
Technique that takes advantage of a security vulnerability to violate an explicit or implicit security policy.

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fault tolerancefault tolerance
fault tolerance
fail safe
fail safe

fail safe
[IEEE Std 610.12 1990]
The ability of Pertaining to a system or component to continue normal operation despite the presence of hardware or software faultsthat automatically places itself in a safe operating mode in the event of a failure—for example, a traffic light that reverts to blinking red in all directions when normal operation fails.

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freestanding environmentfreestanding environment
freestanding environment [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
An environment in which C program execution may take place without any benefit of an operating system. Program startup might occur at some function other than main(), complex types might not be implemented, and only certain minimal library facilities are guaranteed to be available. Anchor
fail soft
fail soft

fail soft [IEEE Std 610.12 1990]
Pertaining to a system or component that continues to provide partial operational capability in the event of certain failures—for example, a traffic light that continues to alternate between red and green if the yellow light fails.

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fatal diagnostic
fatal diagnostic

fatal diagnostic

A diagnostic message that causes an implementation not to perform the translation.

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fault tolerance
fault tolerance

fault tolerance [IEEE Std 610.12 1990]
The ability of a system or component to continue normal operation despite the presence of hardware or software faults.

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freestanding environment
freestanding environment

freestanding function-like macrofunction-like macro function-like macro [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
A #define preprocessing directive that defines an identifier immediately followed by zero or more parameters, the ellipsis (...), or a combination of the two, enclosed in parentheses, similar syntactically to a function call. Subsequent instances of the macro name followed by a parenthesized list of arguments in a translation unit are replaced by the replacement list of preprocessing tokens that constitute the remainder of the directive. See also object-like macro and unsafe function-like macro. Anchorhosted environmenthosted environmenthosted environment [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
An environment that is not freestandingin which C program execution may take place without any benefit of an operating system. Program startup occurs at might occur at some function other than main(), complex types are might not be implemented, and all C Standard only certain minimal library facilities are guaranteed to be available.

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implementationimplementation
implementation
function-like macro
function-like macro

function-like macro [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
Particular set of software, running in a particular translation environment under particular control options, that performs translation of programs for, and supports execution of functions in, a particular execution environment. Anchorimplementation-defined behaviorimplementation-defined behavior implementation-defined behavior [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
Unspecified behavior whereby each implementation documents how the choice is made. Anchorin-band error indicatorin-band error indicatorin-band error indicator
A library function return value on error that can never be returned by a successful call to that library function.A #define preprocessing directive that defines an identifier immediately followed by zero or more parameters, the ellipsis (...), or a combination of the two, enclosed in parentheses, similar syntactically to a function call. Subsequent instances of the macro name followed by a parenthesized list of arguments in a translation unit are replaced by the replacement list of preprocessing tokens that constitute the remainder of the directive. See object-like macro and unsafe function-like macro.

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hosted environment
hosted environment

hosted environment [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
An environment that is not freestanding. Program startup occurs at main(), complex types are implemented, and all C standard library facilities are available.

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implementation
implementation

implementation [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
Particular set of software, running in a particular translation environment under particular control options, that performs translation of programs for, and supports execution of functions in, a particular execution environment.

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implementation-defined behavior
implementation-defined behavior

implementation-defined behavior Anchorincomplete typeincomplete type incomplete type [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
A type that describes an identifier but lacks information needed to determine the size of the identifier. Anchorindeterminate valueindeterminate value indeterminate value [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
Either an unspecified value or a trap representationUnspecified behavior whereby each implementation documents how the choice is made.

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invalid pointerinvalid pointer
invalid pointer
A pointer that is not a valid pointer
in-band error indicator
in-band error indicator

in-band error indicator[ISO/IEC TS 17961:2013]
A library function return value on error that can never be returned by a successful call to that library function.

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livenessincomplete typeliveness
liveness
Every operation or method invocation executes to completion without interruptions, even if it goes against safety.
incomplete type

incomplete type [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
A type that describes an identifier but lacks information needed to determine the size of the identifier.

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indeterminate value
indeterminate value

indeterminate value Anchorlocale-specific behaviorlocale-specific behavior locale-specific behavior [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
Behavior that depends on local conventions of nationality, culture, and language that each implementation documents
Either an unspecified value or a trap representation.

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invalid pointer
invalid pointer

invalid pointer
A pointer that is not a valid pointer.

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lvaluelivenesslvalue
lvalue [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
An expression with an object type or an incomplete type other than void. The name lvalue comes originally from the assignment expression E1 = E2, in which the left operand E1 is required to be a (modifiable) lvalue. It is perhaps better considered as representing an object "locator value." Anchormitigationmitigation mitigation [Seacord 2005a]
Methods, techniques, processes, tools, or runtime libraries that can prevent or limit exploits against vulnerabilities. Anchormutilated valuemutilated valuemutilated value
 Result of an operation performed on an untainted value that yields either an undefined result (such as the result of signed integer overflow), the result of right-shifting a negative number, implicit conversion to an integral type where the value cannot be represented in the destination type, or unsigned integer wrapping.

EXAMPLE
int j = INT_MAX + 1; // j is mutilated
char c = 1234; // c is mutilated if char is eight bits
unsigned int u = 0U - 1; // u is mutilated

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liveness

liveness
Every operation or method invocation executes to completion without interruptions, even if it goes against safety.

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locale-specific behavior
locale-specific behavior

locale-specific behavior [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
Behavior that depends on local conventions of nationality, culture, and language that each implementation documents.

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lvalue
lvalue

lvalue [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
An expression with an object type or an incomplete type other than void. The name lvalue comes originally from the assignment expression E1 = E2, in which the left operand E1 is required to be a (modifiable) lvalue. It is perhaps better considered as representing an object "locator value."

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mitigation
mitigation

mitigation [Seacord 2005a]
Methods, techniques, processes, tools, or runtime libraries that can prevent or limit exploits against vulnerabilities.

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nonpersistent signal handler
nonpersistent signal handler

nonpersistent signal handler
Signal handler running on an implementation that requires the program to again register the signal handler after occurrences of the signal to catch subsequent occurrences of that signal.

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normal termination
normal termination

normal program termination [Open Group 2008IEEE Std 1003.1-2013]
Normal termination occurs by a return from main(), when requested with the exit(), _exit(), or _Exit() functions, or when the last thread in the process terminates by returning from its start function , by calling the pthread_exit() function, or through cancellation. See also abnormal termination.

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object-like macro
object-like macro

object-like macro [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
A #define preprocessing directive that defines an identifier with no parentheses. Subsequent instances of the macro name in a translation unit are replaced by the replacement list of preprocessing tokens that constitute the remainder of the directive. See also function-like macro.

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out-of-band error indicator
out-of-band error indicator

out-of-band error indicatorindicator [ISO/IEC TS 17961:2013]
A library function return value used to indicate nothing but the error status.

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out-of-domain value
out-of-domain value

out-of-domain value [ISO/IEC TS 17961:2013]
One of a set of values that is not in the domain of a particular operator or function.

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reentrant
reentrant

reentrant [Dowd 2006]
A function is reentrant if multiple instances of the same function can run in the same address space concurrently without creating the potential for inconsistent statesISO/IEC/IEEE 24765:2010 ]
Pertaining to a software module that can be entered as part of one process while also in execution as part of another process and still achieve the desired results.

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reliability
reliability

reliability [IEEE Std 610.12 1990]
The ability of a system or component to perform its required functions under stated conditions for a specified period of time. Anchorrestricted sinkrestricted sinkrestricted sink
Operands and arguments whose domain is a subset of the domain described by their types.

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IEEE Std 610.12 1990]
The ability of a system or component to perform its required functions under stated conditions for a specified period of time.

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restricted sink
restricted sink

restricted sink [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
Operands and arguments whose domain is a subset of the domain described by their types.

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robustness
robustness

robustness [IEEE Std 610.12 1990]
The degree to which a system or component can function correctly in the presence of invalid inputs or stressful environmental conditions.

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rvalue
rvalue

rvalue [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
Value of an expression.

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sanitize
sanitizesanitize
sanitize
sanitize [ISO/IEC TS 17961:2013]
Assure by testing or replacement that a tainted or other value conforms to the constraints imposed by one or more restricted sinks into which it may flow.

NOTE
If the value does not conform, either the path is diverted to avoid using the value or a different, known-conforming value is substituted.
EXAMPLE Adding substituted—for example, adding a null character to the end of a buffer before passing it as an argument to the strlen function.

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security flaw
security flaw

security flaw [Seacord 2005aISO/IEC TS 17961:2013]
Defect that poses a potential security risk.

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side effect
side effect
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side effects
side effects

side effect [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
Changes in the state of the execution environment achieved by accessing a volatile object, modifying an object, modifying a file, or calling a function that does any of those operations.

NOTE
The IEC 60559 standard for binary floating-point arithmetic requires certain user-accessible status flags and control modes. Floating-point operations implicitly set the status flags; modes affect result values of floating-point operations. Implementations that support such floatinga floating-point state are required to regard changes to it as side effects. These are detailed in Annex F of the C Standard.

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static analysis
static analysisstrictly conformingstrictly conforming

static analysis [Chess 2007ISO/IEC TS 17961:2013]
Any process for assessing code without executing it (p. 3).

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strictly conforming
strictly conforming

strictly conforming [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
A strictly conforming program is one that uses only those features of the language and library specified in the international standard. Strictly conforming programs are intended to be maximally portable among conforming implementations and cannot, for example, depend on implementation-defined behavior.

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string
string

string
[ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
A string is a contiguous sequence of characters terminated by and including the first null character.

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tainted source
tainted source

tainted sourcesource [ISO/IEC TS 17961:2013]
External source of untrusted data.

NOTE
Tainted sources include

    • parameters to the main() function,
    • the returned values from localeconv(), fgetc(), getc, getchar(), fgetwc(), getwc(), and getwchar, and()
    • the strings produced by getenv(), fscanf(), vfscanf(), vscanf(), fgets(), fread(), fwscanf(), vfwscanf(), vwscanf(), wscanf(), and fgetws.()

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tainted value
tainted value

tainted value [ISO/IEC TS 17961:2013]
Value derived from a tainted source that has not been sanitized.

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target implementation
target implementation

target implementation [ISO/IEC TS 17961:2013]
Implementation of the C programming language whose environmental limits and implementation-defined behavior are assumed by the analyzer during the analysis of a program.

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undefined behavior
undefined behavior

undefined behavior (UB) [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
Behavior, upon use of a nonportable or erroneous program construct or of erroneous data, for which the standard C Standard imposes no requirements. An example of undefined behavior is the behavior on integer overflow.

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untrusted data
untrusted data

untrusted data [ISO/IEC 989911889-1:20112009]
Data originating from outside of a trust boundary [ISO/IEC 11889-1:2009].

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valid pointer
valid pointer

valid pointer [ISO/IEC 9899TS 17961:20112013]
Pointer that refers to an element within an array or one past the last element of an array. See invalid pointer.

NOTE 1
For the purposes of this definition, a pointer to an object that is not an element of an array behaves the same as a pointer to the first element of an array of length one with the type of the object as its element type. (See C Standard, subclause 6.5.8, paragraph 4.)
NOTE 2 For the purposes of this definition, an object can be considered to be an array of a certain number of bytes; that number is the size of the object , as produced by the sizeof operator. (See C Standard, subclause 6.3.2.3, paragraph 7.)

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validation
validation

validation [IEC 61508-4]
Confirmation by examination and provision of objective evidence that the particular requirements for a specific intended use are fulfilled.

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vulnerability
vulnerability

vulnerability [Seacord 2005aISO/IEC TS 17961:2013]
Set of conditions that allows an attacker to violate an explicit or implicit security policy.

 

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warning
warning
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warning message
warning message

warning message

A diagnostic message generated when source code is encountered that does not prevent an implementation from translating a translation unit. See diagnostic message and error message.


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