The product uses or accesses a resource that has not been initialized.
When a resource has not been properly initialized, the product may behave unexpectedly. This may lead to a crash or invalid memory access, but the consequences vary depending on the type of resource and how it is used within the product.
Explicitly initialize the resource before use. If this is performed through an API function or standard procedure, follow all required steps.
Pay close attention to complex conditionals that affect initialization, since some branches might not perform the initialization.
Avoid race conditions (CWE-362) during initialization routines.
Run or compile the product with settings that generate warnings about uninitialized variables or data.
When reusing a resource such as memory or a program variable, the original contents of that resource may not be cleared before it is sent to an untrusted party.
The uninitialized resource may contain values that cause program flow to change in ways that the programmer did not intend.
Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)
CVE-2019-9805Chain: Creation of the packet client occurs before initialization is complete (CWE-696) resulting in a read from uninitialized memory (CWE-908), causing memory corruption.
CVE-2008-4197Use of uninitialized memory may allow code execution.
CVE-2008-2934Free of an uninitialized pointer leads to crash and possible code execution.
CVE-2008-0063Product does not clear memory contents when generating an error message, leading to information leak.
CVE-2008-0062Lack of initialization triggers NULL pointer dereference or double-free.