CWE-667

Improper Locking
AI Translation Available

The product does not properly acquire or release a lock on a resource, leading to unexpected resource state changes and behaviors.

Status
draft
Abstraction
class

Locking is a type of synchronization behavior that ensures that multiple independently-operating processes or threads do not interfere with each other when accessing the same resource. All processes/threads are expected to follow the same steps for locking. If these steps are not followed precisely - or if no locking is done at all - then another process/thread could modify the shared resource in a way that is not visible or predictable to the original process. This can lead to data or memory corruption, denial of service, etc.

Common Consequences

availability
Impacts
dos: resource consumption (cpu)

Detection Methods

automated static analysis

Potential Mitigations

Phases:
implementation
Descriptions:
• Use industry standard APIs to implement locking mechanism.