CWE-463Deletion of Data Structure Sentinel

Description

The accidental deletion of a data-structure sentinel can cause serious programming logic problems.

Often times data-structure sentinels are used to mark structure of the data structure. A common example of this is the null character at the end of strings. Another common example is linked lists which may contain a sentinel to mark the end of the list. It is dangerous to allow this type of control data to be easily accessible. Therefore, it is important to protect from the deletion or modification outside of some wrapper interface which provides safety.

Common consequences

• Availability,Other→Other
  Generally this error will cause the data structure to not work properly.
• Authorization,Other→Other
  If a control character, such as NULL is removed, one may cause resource access control problems.

Potential mitigations

• Architecture and Design
  Use an abstraction library to abstract away risky APIs. Not a complete solution.
• Build and Compilation
  [object Object]
• Operation
  Use OS-level preventative functionality. Not a complete solution.

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