The program fails to release a lock it holds, which might lead to deadlock.
The program can potentially fail to release a system resource.
Resource leaks have at least two common causes:
- Error conditions and other exceptional circumstances.
- Confusion over which part of the program is responsible for releasing the resource.
Most unreleased resource issues result in general software reliability problems, but if an attacker can intentionally trigger a resource leak, the attacker might be able to launch a denial of service by depleting the resource pool.
Example: The following function does destroy the condition variable it allocates if an error occurs. If the process is long-lived, the process can run out of file handles.
int helper(char* fName)
{
int status;
...
pthread_cond_init (&count_threshold_cv, NULL);
pthread_mutex_init(&count_mutex, NULL);
status = perform_operation();
if (status) {
printf("%s", "cannot perform operation");
return OPERATION_FAIL;
}
pthread_mutex_destroy(&count_mutex);
pthread_cond_destroy(&count_threshold_cv);
return OPERATION_SUCCESS;
}
[1] Standards Mapping - OWASP Top 10 2004 - (OWASP 2004) A9 Application Denial of Service
[2] Standards Mapping - Security Technical Implementation Guide Version 3 - (STIG 3) APP6080 CAT II
[3] Standards Mapping - Common Weakness Enumeration - (CWE) CWE ID 411
[4] Standards Mapping - Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard Version 1.1 - (PCI 1.1) Requirement 6.5.9