CWE-170Improper Null Termination

Abstraction: Base · CVEs in our corpus: 60

The product does not terminate or incorrectly terminates a string or array with a null character or equivalent terminator.

Null termination errors frequently occur in two different ways. An off-by-one error could cause a null to be written out of bounds, leading to an overflow. Or, a program could use a strncpy() function call incorrectly, which prevents a null terminator from being added at all. Other scenarios are possible.

Last updated: 16 October 2026 07:24 UTC

Control responseHuman-reviewed

Answering this weakness across the control lifecycle, from our framework cross-walks.

Prevent

Stop it (NIST 800-53 / CSF Protect)

PR.PS-06
SA-11 Developer Testing and Evaluation
SA-15 Development Process, Standards, and Tools
SI-10 Information Input Validation

Detect

Catch it (CSF Detect / Respond)

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Harden

Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)

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Validate

Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)

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NIST 800-53 r5 controls PROPOSED for this weakness (0)AI-assisted

These are model PROPOSALS, not graded mappings. They come from controls_to_cwe_proposals, which carries no grade field at all; across the CWE pages 1,540 of 1,722 such associations (89%) have never been graded by anything. The heading said “address” until 2026-09-29, which asserted a relationship the data does not carry. Graded cross-walks are on the framework map, not here.

Control	Title	Family	Why it addresses this CWE
No NIST controls proposed yet.

Top CVEs of this weakness type, ranked by Risk Priority

CVE	Risk	CVSS	EPSS	Published
`CVE-2021-22931`	8.6	9.8	0.2195	2021-08-16
`CVE-2019-8275`	7.9	9.8	0.0397	2019-03-08
`CVE-2021-31886`	7.8	9.8	0.0305	2021-11-09
`CVE-2021-31884`	7.6	9.8	0.0150	2021-11-09
`CVE-2026-5067`	7.5	9.8	0.0086	2026-06-09
`CVE-2026-8721`	7.3	9.8	0.0055	2026-05-17
`CVE-2021-1469`	7.2	9.9	0.0107	2021-03-24
`CVE-2021-1471`	7.2	9.9	0.0137	2021-03-24
`CVE-2021-1411`	7.2	9.9	0.0143	2021-03-24
`CVE-2021-1417`	7.1	9.9	0.0099	2021-03-24
`CVE-2021-1418`	7.1	9.9	0.0097	2021-03-24
`CVE-2021-31887`	7.0	8.8	0.0245	2021-11-09
`CVE-2021-31888`	7.0	8.8	0.0245	2021-11-09
`CVE-2026-55738`	6.6	8.8	0.0055	2026-06-17
`CVE-2024-45288`	6.2	8.4	0.0030	2024-09-05
`CVE-2025-67733`	6.2	8.5	0.0061	2026-02-23
`CVE-2022-47515`	6.1	7.5	0.0119	2022-12-18
`CVE-2023-24021`	6.0	7.5	0.0091	2023-01-20
`CVE-2024-21442`	6.0	7.8	0.0083	2024-03-12
`CVE-2024-43474`	6.0	7.6	0.0127	2024-09-10
`CVE-2026-45798`	6.0	7.5	0.0092	2026-08-19
`CVE-2026-70587`	6.0	7.5	0.0103	2026-09-08
`CVE-2024-31484`	5.9	7.8	0.0047	2024-05-14
`CVE-2026-34464`	5.9	8.8	0.0015	2026-05-05
`CVE-2025-62792`	5.8	7.5	0.0038	2025-10-29