An issue was discovered in NASM version 2.16rc0. There are memory leaks in nasm_calloc() in nasmlib/alloc.c.
Weakness
The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.
Affected Software
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Netwide_assembler | Nasm | 2.16-rc0 (including) | 2.16-rc0 (including) |
| Nasm | Ubuntu | bionic | * |
| Nasm | Ubuntu | esm-apps/noble | * |
| Nasm | Ubuntu | focal | * |
| Nasm | Ubuntu | kinetic | * |
| Nasm | Ubuntu | lunar | * |
| Nasm | Ubuntu | mantic | * |
| Nasm | Ubuntu | noble | * |
| Nasm | Ubuntu | oracular | * |
| Nasm | Ubuntu | plucky | * |
| Nasm | Ubuntu | questing | * |
| Nasm | Ubuntu | trusty | * |
| Nasm | Ubuntu | xenial | * |
Potential Mitigations
- Choose a language or tool that provides automatic memory management, or makes manual memory management less error-prone.
- For example, glibc in Linux provides protection against free of invalid pointers.
- When using Xcode to target OS X or iOS, enable automatic reference counting (ARC) [REF-391].
- To help correctly and consistently manage memory when programming in C++, consider using a smart pointer class such as std::auto_ptr (defined by ISO/IEC ISO/IEC 14882:2003), std::shared_ptr and std::unique_ptr (specified by an upcoming revision of the C++ standard, informally referred to as C++ 1x), or equivalent solutions such as Boost.