CWE · MITRE source

CWE-690Unchecked Return Value to NULL Pointer Dereference

Abstraction: Compound · CVEs in our corpus: 33

The product does not check for an error after calling a function that can return with a NULL pointer if the function fails, which leads to a resultant NULL pointer dereference.

While unchecked return value weaknesses are not limited to returns of NULL pointers (see the examples in CWE-252), functions often return NULL to indicate an error status. When this error condition is not checked, a NULL pointer dereference can occur.

Last updated: 20 August 2026 14:15 UTC