CWE-244: Improper Clearing of Heap Memory Before Release ('Heap Inspection')

Variant

Using realloc() to resize buffers that store sensitive information can leave the sensitive information exposed to attack, because it is not removed from memory.

When sensitive data such as a password or an encryption key is not removed from memory, it could be exposed to an attacker using a "heap inspection" attack that reads the sensitive data using memory dumps or other methods. The realloc() function is commonly used to increase the size of a block of allocated memory. This operation often requires copying the contents of the old memory block into a new and larger block. This operation leaves the contents of the original block intact but inaccessible to the program, preventing the program from being able to scrub sensitive data from memory. If an attacker can later examine the contents of a memory dump, the sensitive data could be exposed.

Consequences

Confidentiality, Other: Read Memory, Other

Recent advisories

CVE-2026-20349 — A vulnerability in the Remote Access SSL VPN service for Cisco Secure Firewall Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Secure Firewall Threat…

All advisories for CWE-244

Is this in your code?

MergeHarbor checks every repository's dependencies against this database, ranks what matters by exploitability and reachability, routes it to the owning team and opens the fix pull request.

Check your repos with MergeHarbor