CS.NRE.CHECK.MIGHT

An object reference value from a path where it is positively checked for null might be dereferenced either explicitly, or through a call to a function that can dereference it, without checking for null.

Vulnerability and risk

Dereferencing a null object reference is a critical runtime problem that will crash the application on some operating systems and throw a runtime exception on others.

Example 1

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
                  public class A {
                      public void foo() {
                          A a = new A();
                          if (a == null)
                              if (flag)
                                  a.foo();
                      }
                      private bool flag;
                  }

Klocwork produces an issue report (CS.NRE.CHECK.MIGHT) at line 6 for variable 'a'. Variable 'a' is compared with 0 value at line 4, and therefore may still be expected to be null when it is dereferenced at line 6 after flag check at line 5.

External guidance

• CWE-476: NULL Pointer Dereference

Security training

Application security training materials provided by Secure Code Warrior.

• Null Dereference Training Video - Test your skills with a training example