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08. Memory Management (MEM)

Created by Robert C. Seacord, last modified by Robert Seacord on May 14, 2008

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Recommendations

MEM00-A. Allocate and free memory in the same module, at the same level of abstraction

MEM01-A. Store a new value in pointers immediately after free()

MEM02-A. Immediately cast the result of a memory allocation function call into a pointer to the allocated type

MEM03-A. Clear sensitive information stored in reusable resources returned for reuse

MEM04-A. Do not perform zero length allocations

MEM05-A. Avoid large stack allocations

MEM06-A. Ensure that sensitive data is not written out to disk

MEM07-A. Ensure that the arguments to calloc() when multiplied can be represented as a size_t

MEM08-A. Use realloc() only to resize dynamically allocated arrays

MEM09-A. Do not assume memory allocation routines initialize memory

Rules

MEM30-C. Do not access freed memory

MEM31-C. Free dynamically allocated memory exactly once

MEM32-C. Detect and handle memory allocation errors

MEM33-C. Use the correct syntax for flexible array members

MEM34-C. Only free memory allocated dynamically

MEM35-C. Allocate sufficient memory for an object

Risk Assessment Summary

Recommendation	Severity	Likelihood	Remediation Cost	Priority	Level
MEM00-A	High	Probable	Medium	P12	L1
MEM01-A	High	Probable	Low	P18	L1
MEM02-A	Low	Unlikely	Low	P3	L3
MEM03-A	Medium	Unlikely	Low	P6	L2
MEM04-A	High	Probable	Medium	P12	L1
MEM05-A	Low	Unlikely	Medium	P2	L3
MEM06-A	1 (low)	1 (unlikely)	2 (medium)	P2	L3
MEM07-A	High	Unlikely	High	P3	L3
MEM08-A	Medium	Unlikely	Medium	P4	L3
MEM09-A	Medium	Unlikely	Low	P6	L2

Rule	Severity	Likelihood	Remediation Cost	Priority	Level
MEM30-C	High	Likely	Medium	P18	L1
MEM31-C	High	Probable	Medium	P12	L1
MEM32-C	Low	Likely	Medium	P6	L2
MEM33-C	Low	Unlikely	Low	P3	L3
MEM34-C	Low	Unlikely	Medium	P2	L3
MEM35-C	High	Probable	High	P6	L2

Related Rules and Recommendations

EXP33-C. Do not read uninitialized memory

EXP34-C. Do not dereference null pointers

INT01-C. Use size_t or rsize_t for all integer values representing the size of an object

STR31-C. Guarantee that storage for strings has sufficient space for character data and the null terminator

References

[[ISO/IEC 9899-1999]] Section 7.20.3, "Memory management functions"
[[Seacord 05]] Chapter 4, "Dynamic Memory Management"

STR35-C. Do not copy data from an unbounded source to a fixed-length array 07. Characters and Strings (STR) MEM00-A. Allocate and free memory in the same module, at the same level of abstraction

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