Base weakness
Incomplete
CWE-463: Deletion of Data Structure Sentinel
The accidental deletion of a data-structure sentinel can cause serious programming logic problems.
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RadicalNotion.AIThe accidental deletion of a data-structure sentinel can cause serious programming logic problems.
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Often times data-structure sentinels are used to mark structure of the data structure. A common example of this is the null character at the end of strings. Another common example is linked lists which may contain a sentinel to mark the end of the list. It is dangerous to allow this type of control data to be easily accessible. Therefore, it is important to protect from the deletion or modification outside of some wrapper interface which provides safety.
3 recorded CVEs are caused by CWE-463 (Deletion of Data Structure Sentinel). The highest-severity and most recent are shown first. 0 new CWE-463 CVEs have been recorded so far in 2026 (1 in 2025).
What can happen when CWE-463 is exploited.
Other
Affects: Availability, Other
Generally this error will cause the data structure to not work properly.
Other
Affects: Authorization, Other
If a control character, such as NULL is removed, one may cause resource access control problems.
Typically introduced during these phases of the software lifecycle.
Languages
Practical mitigations for CWE-463, grouped by where in the lifecycle they apply.
Use an abstraction library to abstract away risky APIs. Not a complete solution.
Run or compile the software using features or extensions that automatically provide a protection mechanism that mitigates or eliminates buffer overflows.
For example, certain compilers and extensions provide automatic buffer overflow detection mechanisms that are built into the compiled code. Examples include the Microsoft Visual Studio /GS flag, Fedora/Red Hat FORTIFY_SOURCE GCC flag, StackGuard, and ProPolice.
Effectiveness: Defense in Depth — This is not necessarily a complete solution, since these mechanisms can only detect certain types of overflows. In addition, an attack could still cause a denial of service, since the typical response is to exit the application.
Use OS-level preventative functionality. Not a complete solution.
Illustrative examples from MITRE showing how the weakness appears in code.
This example creates a null terminated string and prints it contents.
Vulnerable example
char *foo;The string foo has space for 9 characters and a null terminator, but 10 characters are written to it. As a result, the string foo is not null terminated and calling printf() on it will have unpredictable and possibly dangerous results.
Common questions about CWE-463.
Weakness data is sourced from the MITRE CWE catalog (v4.20). CVE associations are aggregated and kept current by RadicalNotion.AI.
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