MLK.MIGHT

Memory leak possible

The program did not release previously allocated memory and a reference to dynamic memory can be lost at this point on some paths.

Vulnerability and risk

Memory leaks cause the application to consume additional memory. This reduces the amount of memory available to other applications and eventually causes the operating system to start paging, slowing the system down. In critical cases, the application will reach overall memory limits, which may result in application crashes.

Example 1

1  void foobar(int i)
2  {
3    char* p = new char[10];
4    if(i) {
5      p = 0;
6    }
7    delete[] p;
8  }

Klocwork produces a memory leak report for line 5, indicating that the dynamic memory stored in 'p' and allocated through the function 'new[]' at line 3 can be lost at line 5.

External guidance

• CWE-401: Improper Release of Memory Before Removing Last Reference ('Memory Leak')
• CWE-415: Double Free
• MEM31-C: Free dynamically allocated memory exactly once