CWE

Premature Release of Resource During Expected Lifetime

ID: 826		Date: (C)2012-05-14   (M)2022-10-10
Type: weakness		Status: INCOMPLETE
Abstraction Type: Base

Description

The program releases a resource that is still intended to be used by the program itself or another actor.

Extended Description

This weakness focuses on errors in which the program should not release a resource, but performs the release anyway. This is different than a weakness in which the program releases a resource at the appropriate time, but it maintains a reference to the resource, which it later accesses. For this weaknesses, the resource should still be valid upon the subsequent access.

When a program releases a resource that is still being used, it is possible that operations will still be taken on this resource, which may have been repurposed in the meantime, leading to issues similar to CWE-825. Consequences may include denial of service, information exposure, or code execution.

Applicable Platforms
None

Common Consequences

Scope	Technical Impact	Notes
Confidentiality	Read application data Read memory	If the released resource is subsequently reused or reallocated, then a read operation on the original resource might access sensitive data that is associated with a different user or entity.
Availability	DoS: crash / exit / restart	When the resource is released, the software might modify some of its structure, or close associated channels (such as a file descriptor). When the software later accesses the resource as if it is valid, the resource might not be in an expected state, leading to resultant errors that may lead to a crash.
Integrity Confidentiality Availability	Execute unauthorized code or commands Modify application data Modify memory	When the resource is released, the software might modify some of its structure. This might affect program logic in the sections of code that still assume the resource is active. If the released resource is related to memory and is used in a function call, or points to unexpected data in a write operation, then code execution may be possible upon subsequent accesses.

Detection Methods
None

Potential Mitigations
None

Relationships

Related CWE	Type	View	Chain
CWE-826 CanPrecede CWE-672	Weakness	CWE-1000

Demonstrative Examples
None

Observed Examples

1. CVE-2009-3547 : chain: race condition might allow resource to be released before operating on it, leading to NULL dereference

For more examples, refer to CVE relations in the bottom box.

White Box Definitions
None

Black Box Definitions
None

Taxynomy Mappings
None

References:
None