BaseIncomplete

CWE-468Incorrect Pointer Scaling

Category: memory

Description

In C and C++, one may often accidentally refer to the wrong memory due to the semantics of when math operations are implicitly scaled.

Common consequences· 1

  • Confidentiality / Integrity — Read Memory, Modify Memory
    Incorrect pointer scaling will often result in buffer overflow conditions. Confidentiality can be compromised if the weakness is in the context of a buffer over-read or under-read.

Potential mitigations· 3

  • [Architecture and Design]Use a platform with high-level memory abstractions.
  • [Implementation]Always use array indexing instead of direct pointer manipulation.
  • [Architecture and Design]Use technologies for preventing buffer overflows.

References

  1. https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/468.html

(incoming)1

TypeTargetConfidenceTier
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-24872cve-2026-248720%live

Related by meaning· 6

Nearest entities by semantic similarity across the cs-graph corpus.

CWE
Return of Pointer Value Outside of Expected Range
CWE
Use of sizeof() on a Pointer Type
CWE
Incorrect Conversion between Numeric Types
CWE
Numeric Truncation Error
CWE
Integer Underflow (Wrap or Wraparound)
CWE
Attempt to Access Child of a Non-structure Pointer
Sourced from MITRE CWE 4.20. Curated for EU compliance use cases by Adam Lundqvist, Founder at SQUR.