CompoundDraft

CWE-690Unchecked Return Value to NULL Pointer Dereference

Category: memory

Description

The product does not check for an error after calling a function that can return with a NULL pointer if the function fails, which leads to a resultant NULL pointer dereference. While unchecked return value weaknesses are not limited to returns of NULL pointers (see the examples in CWE-252), functions often return NULL to indicate an error status. When this error condition is not checked, a NULL pointer dereference can occur.

Common consequences· 2

  • Availability — DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart
  • Integrity / Confidentiality / Availability — Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands, Read Memory, Modify Memory
    In rare circumstances, when NULL is equivalent to the 0x0 memory address and privileged code can access it, then writing or reading memory is possible, which may lead to code execution.

References

  1. https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/690.html

(incoming)4

TypeTargetConfidenceTier
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-24404cve-2026-244040%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-24409cve-2026-244090%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-24410cve-2026-244100%live
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-24411cve-2026-244110%live

Related by meaning· 6

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

CWE
NULL Pointer Dereference
CWE
Unchecked Return Value
CWE
Access of Uninitialized Pointer
CWE
Expired Pointer Dereference
CWE
Use of Out-of-range Pointer Offset
CWE
Untrusted Pointer Dereference
Sourced from MITRE CWE 4.20. Curated for EU compliance use cases by Adam Lundqvist, Founder at SQUR.