CWE-401 1729 CVEs MITRE definition ↗

CWE-401: Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

Overview

CWE-401 (Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime) documents a weakness type used across vulnerability databases and security assessments. Use the sections below for definition, context, and mapped CVEs.

Security impact
Security impact: Depends on product and context; use CVE records, severity scores, and MITRE guidance to prioritize.

Description

The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.

Applicable platforms

Kind Name Class Prevalence OS / CPE
language Not Language-Specific Undetermined
language C Undetermined
language C++ Undetermined

Related CVEs in this database

These CVEs are mapped to this weakness in this database and kept for traceability and search.

CVE Published Summary
CVE-2026-48059 2026-06-12 Netty is a network application framework for development of protocol servers and clients. Prior to versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final, the HAProxy PROXY protocol v2 codec in netty leaks native or…
CVE-2026-48043 2026-06-12 Netty is a network application framework for development of protocol servers and clients. In netty-codec-http2 prior to versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final, the `DelegatingDecompressorFrameListene…
CVE-2026-48006 2026-06-12 Netty is a network application framework for development of protocol servers and clients. Prior to versions 4.1.135.Final and 4.2.15.Final, the RedisArrayAggregator handler permanently leaks pooled di…
CVE-2026-20746 2026-06-12 Virtual attribute handling in Ping Identity PingDirectory in affected versions allows only authorized users to exhaust java memory heap when recent login history is enabled and copying virtual attribu…
CVE-2026-53464 2026-06-10 ImageMagick is free and open-source software used for editing and manipulating digital images. Prior to version 7.1.2-25, when providing invalid options to the wand option parser a small memory leak w…
CVE-2026-46679 2026-06-10 libp2p is a JavaScript Implementation of libp2p networking stack. Prior to version 15.0.23, three cooperating omissions in @libp2p/gossipsub allow an unauthenticated single peer to exhaust the Node.js…
CVE-2026-45682 2026-06-02 OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation provides eBPF instrumentation based on the OpenTelemetry standard. Prior to version 0.9.0, the custom CappedConcurrentHashMap introduced for Java TLS state tracking …
CVE-2026-47326 2026-05-28 Ubuntu Linux 6.8, 6.17 and 7.0 contain SAUCE patches with a memory leak in the handling of big responses to AppArmor notifications. The bug can be triggered by an unprivileged local user. The memory l…
CVE-2026-46228 2026-05-28 In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: spi: ch341: fix devres lifetime USB drivers bind to USB interfaces and any device managed resources should have their lifetime tie…
CVE-2026-46224 2026-05-28 In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm/xe: Fix bo leak in xe_dma_buf_init_obj() on allocation failure When drm_gpuvm_resv_object_alloc() fails, the pre-allocated sto…
CVE-2026-46221 2026-05-28 In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: EDAC/versalnet: Fix device name memory leak The device name allocated via kzalloc() in init_one_mc() is assigned to dev->init_name…
CVE-2026-46207 2026-05-28 In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: vsock/virtio: fix empty payload in tap skb for non-linear buffers For non-linear skbs, virtio_transport_build_skb() goes through v…
CVE-2026-46201 2026-05-28 In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm/xe: Fix dma-buf attachment leak in xe_gem_prime_import() When xe_dma_buf_init_obj() fails, the attachment from dma_buf_dynamic…
CVE-2026-46182 2026-05-28 In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: pseries/papr-hvpipe: Prevent kernel stack memory leak to userspace The hdr variable is allocated on the stack and only hdr.version…
CVE-2026-46178 2026-05-28 In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: RDMA/mlx4: Fix resource leak on error in mlx4_ib_create_srq() Sashiko points out that mlx4_srq_alloc() was not undone during error…
CVE-2026-46171 2026-05-28 In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: riscv: kvm: fix vector context allocation leak When the second kzalloc (host_context.vector.datap) fails in kvm_riscv_vcpu_alloc_v…
CVE-2026-46151 2026-05-28 In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: usb: usblp: fix heap leak in IEEE 1284 device ID via short response usblp_ctrl_msg() collapses the usb_control_msg() return value …
CVE-2026-46147 2026-05-28 In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: KVM: arm64: Fix pin leak and publication ordering in __pkvm_init_vcpu() Two bugs exist in the vCPU initialisation path: 1. If a c…
CVE-2026-44660 2026-05-27 UltraJSON is a fast JSON encoder and decoder written in pure C with bindings for Python 3.7+. Prior to 5.12.1, when ujson.dump() writes to a file-like object and the write operation raises an exceptio…
CVE-2026-9572 2026-05-26 A security vulnerability has been detected in GPAC up to 2.4.0. Affected by this issue is the function Media_GetSample of the file src/isomedia/media.c of the component MP4Box. Such manipulation of th…

Previous names

  • Memory Leak (2008-04-11)
  • Failure to Release Memory Before Removing Last Reference (aka 'Memory Leak') (2009-05-27)
  • Failure to Release Memory Before Removing Last Reference ('Memory Leak') (2010-12-13)
  • Improper Release of Memory Before Removing Last Reference ('Memory Leak') (2019-01-03)
  • Improper Release of Memory Before Removing Last Reference (2019-06-20)

Content submission

Name
PLOVER
Date
2006-07-19
Version
Draft 3

Content modifications

Date Name Version Importance Comment
2008-07-01 Eric Dalci 1.0 updated Time_of_Introduction
2008-08-01 1.0 added/updated white box definitions
2008-08-15 1.0 Suggested OWASP Top Ten 2004 mapping
2008-09-08 CWE Content Team 1.0 updated Applicable_Platforms, Common_Consequences, Relationships, Other_Notes, References, Relationship_Notes, Taxonomy_Mappings, Terminology_Notes
2008-10-14 CWE Content Team 1.0.1 updated Description
2009-03-10 CWE Content Team 1.3 updated Other_Notes
2009-05-27 CWE Content Team 1.4 updated Name
2009-07-17 KDM Analytics 1.5 Improved the White_Box_Definition
2009-07-27 CWE Content Team 1.5 updated White_Box_Definitions
2009-10-29 CWE Content Team 1.6 updated Modes_of_Introduction, Other_Notes
2010-02-16 CWE Content Team 1.8 updated Relationships
2010-06-21 CWE Content Team 1.9 updated Other_Notes, Potential_Mitigations
2010-12-13 CWE Content Team 1.11 updated Demonstrative_Examples, Name
2011-03-29 CWE Content Team 1.12 updated Alternate_Terms
2011-06-01 CWE Content Team 1.13 updated Common_Consequences, Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
2012-05-11 CWE Content Team 2.2 updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
2012-10-30 CWE Content Team 2.3 updated Potential_Mitigations
2013-02-21 CWE Content Team 2.4 updated Observed_Examples
2014-02-18 CWE Content Team 2.6 updated Potential_Mitigations, References
2014-07-30 CWE Content Team 2.8 updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
2017-11-08 CWE Content Team 3.0 updated References, Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings, White_Box_Definitions
2019-01-03 CWE Content Team 3.2 updated Common_Consequences, Demonstrative_Examples, Name, References, Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings, Type, Weakness_Ordinalities
2019-06-20 CWE Content Team 3.3 updated Description, Name
2020-02-24 CWE Content Team 4.0 updated References, Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
2020-08-20 CWE Content Team 4.2 updated Relationships
2021-03-15 CWE Content Team 4.4 updated Relationships
2022-10-13 CWE Content Team 4.9 updated Taxonomy_Mappings
2023-01-31 CWE Content Team 4.10 updated Common_Consequences, Description
2023-04-27 CWE Content Team 4.11 updated Detection_Factors, References, Relationships, Time_of_Introduction
2023-06-29 CWE Content Team 4.12 updated Mapping_Notes
2025-04-03 CWE Content Team 4.17 updated Description, Diagram, Modes_of_Introduction
2025-12-11 CWE Content Team 4.19 updated Applicable_Platforms
2026-04-30 CWE Content Team 4.20 updated Alternate_Terms, Detection_Factors, Potential_Mitigations, References
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