An uninitialized pointer in Rockwell Automation Arena Simulation software could potentially allow a malicious user to insert unauthorized code to the software by leveraging the pointer after it is properly. Once inside, the threat actor can run harmful code on the system. This affects the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the product. To trigger this, the user would unwittingly need to open a malicious file shared by the threat actor.
The product accesses or uses a pointer that has not been initialized.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arena | Rockwellautomation | 16.00.00 (including) | 16.20.03 (excluding) |
If the pointer contains an uninitialized value, then the value might not point to a valid memory location. This could cause the product to read from or write to unexpected memory locations, leading to a denial of service. If the uninitialized pointer is used as a function call, then arbitrary functions could be invoked. If an attacker can influence the portion of uninitialized memory that is contained in the pointer, this weakness could be leveraged to execute code or perform other attacks. Depending on memory layout, associated memory management behaviors, and product operation, the attacker might be able to influence the contents of the uninitialized pointer, thus gaining more fine-grained control of the memory location to be accessed.