• The cpp/unclear-array-index-validation ("Unclear validation of array index") query has been improved to reduce false positives and increase true positives.
• Fixed false positives in the cpp/uninitialized-local ("Potentially uninitialized local variable") query if there are extraction errors in the function.
• The cpp/incorrect-string-type-conversion query now produces fewer false positives caused by failure to detect byte arrays.
• The cpp/incorrect-string-type-conversion query now produces fewer false positives caused by failure to recognize dynamic checks prior to possible dangerous widening.

• Fixed false positives in the cpp/wrong-number-format-arguments ("Too few arguments to formatting function") query when the formatting function has been declared implicitly.

• Removed false positives caused by buffer accesses in unreachable code
• Removed false positives caused by inconsistent type checking
• Add modeling of C functions that don't throw, thereby increasing the precision of the cpp/incorrect-allocation-error-handling ("Incorrect allocation-error handling") query. The query now produces additional true positives.

No user-facing changes.

• The cpp/uncontrolled-allocation-size ("Uncontrolled allocation size") query now considers arithmetic operations that might reduce the size of user input as a barrier. The query therefore produces fewer false positive results.

• The precision of cpp/unsigned-difference-expression-compared-zero ("Unsigned difference expression compared to zero") has been increased to high. As a result, it will be run by default as part of the Code Scanning suite.

• Fixed false positives in the cpp/memory-may-not-be-freed ("Memory may not be freed") query involving class methods that returned an allocated field of that class being misidentified as allocators.
• The cpp/incorrectly-checked-scanf ("Incorrect return-value check for a 'scanf'-like function") query now produces fewer false positive results.
• The cpp/incorrect-allocation-error-handling ("Incorrect allocation-error handling") query no longer produces occasional false positive results inside template instantiations.
• The cpp/suspicious-allocation-size ("Not enough memory allocated for array of pointer type") query no longer produces false positives on "variable size" structs.

• The precision of cpp/iterator-to-expired-container ("Iterator to expired container") has been increased to high. As a result, it will be run by default as part of the Code Scanning suite.
• The precision of cpp/unsafe-strncat ("Potentially unsafe call to strncat") has been increased to high. As a result, it will be run by default as part of the Code Scanning suite.

• The cpp/unsigned-difference-expression-compared-zero ("Unsigned difference expression compared to zero") query now produces fewer false positives.

No user-facing changes.

No user-facing changes.

• The cpp/dangerous-function-overflow no longer produces a false positive alert when the gets function does not have exactly one parameter.

• CodeQL package management is now generally available, and all GitHub-produced CodeQL packages have had their version numbers increased to 1.0.0.

• The "Use of unique pointer after lifetime ends" query (cpp/use-of-unique-pointer-after-lifetime-ends) no longer reports an alert when the pointer is converted to a boolean
• The "Variable not initialized before use" query (cpp/not-initialised) no longer reports an alert on static variables.

• Added a new query, cpp/iterator-to-expired-container, to detect the creation of iterators owned by a temporary objects that are about to be destroyed.

• The "Uncontrolled data used in path expression" query (cpp/path-injection) query produces fewer near-duplicate results.
• The "Global variable may be used before initialization" query (cpp/global-use-before-init) no longer raises an alert on global variables that are initialized when they are declared.
• The "Inconsistent null check of pointer" query (cpp/inconsistent-nullness-testing) query no longer raises an alert when the guarded check is in a macro expansion.

No user-facing changes.

• Added a new query, cpp/type-confusion, to detect casts to invalid types.

• @precision medium metadata was added to the cpp/boost/tls-settings-misconfiguration and cpp/boost/use-of-deprecated-hardcoded-security-protocol queries, and these queries are now included in the security-extended suite. The @name metadata of these queries were also updated.

• The "Missing return-value check for a 'scanf'-like function" query (cpp/missing-check-scanf) has been converted to a path-problem query.
• The "Potentially uninitialized local variable" query (cpp/uninitialized-local) has been converted to a path-problem query.
• Added models for GLib allocation and deallocation functions.

No user-facing changes.

No user-facing changes.

• The "non-constant format string" query (cpp/non-constant-format) has been converted to a path-problem query.
• The new C/C++ dataflow and taint-tracking libraries (semmle.code.cpp.dataflow.new.DataFlow and semmle.code.cpp.dataflow.new.TaintTracking) now implicitly assume that dataflow and taint modelled via DataFlowFunction and TaintFunction always fully overwrite their buffers and thus act as flow barriers. As a result, many dataflow and taint-tracking queries now produce fewer false positives. To remove this assumption and go back to the previous behavior for a given model, one can override the new isPartialWrite predicate.

• The "non-constant format string" query (cpp/non-constant-format) has been updated to produce fewer false positives.
• Added dataflow models for the gettext function variants.

• Corrected 2 false positive with cpp/incorrect-string-type-conversion: conversion of byte arrays to wchar and new array allocations converted to wchar.
• The "Incorrect return-value check for a 'scanf'-like function" query (cpp/incorrectly-checked-scanf) no longer reports an alert when an explicit check for EOF is added.
• The "Incorrect return-value check for a 'scanf'-like function" query (cpp/incorrectly-checked-scanf) now recognizes more EOF checks.
• The "Potentially uninitialized local variable" query (cpp/uninitialized-local) no longer reports an alert when the local variable is used as a qualifier to a static member function call.
• The diagnostic query cpp/diagnostics/successfully-extracted-files now considers any C/C++ file seen during extraction, even one with some errors, to be extracted / scanned. This affects the Code Scanning UI measure of scanned C/C++ files.

• The cpp/include-non-header style query will now ignore the .def extension for textual header inclusions.

• Added a new query, cpp/use-of-unique-pointer-after-lifetime-ends, to detect uses of the contents unique pointers that will be destroyed immediately.
• The cpp/incorrectly-checked-scanf query has been added. This finds results where the return value of scanf is not checked correctly. Some of these were previously found by cpp/missing-check-scanf and will no longer be reported there.

• The cpp/badly-bounded-write query could report false positives when a pointer was first initialized with a literal and later assigned a dynamically allocated array. These false positives now no longer occur.

No user-facing changes.

• The cpp/tainted-format-string-through-global query has been deleted. This does not lead to a loss of relevant alerts, as the query duplicated a subset of the alerts from cpp/tainted-format-string.

• Added a new query, cpp/use-of-string-after-lifetime-ends, to detect calls to c_str on strings that will be destroyed immediately.

• The cpp/uninitialized-local query has been improved to produce fewer false positives.

No user-facing changes.

• The query cpp/redundant-null-check-simple has been promoted to Code Scanning. The query finds cases where a pointer is compared to null after it has already been dereferenced. Such comparisons likely indicate a bug at the place where the pointer is dereferenced, or where the pointer is compared to null.

  Note: This query was incorrectly noted as being promoted to Code Scanning in CodeQL version 2.14.6.

• The cpp/double-free query has been further improved to reduce false positives and its precision has been increased from medium to high.
• The cpp/use-after-free query has been further improved to reduce false positives and its precision has been increased from medium to high.

• The queries cpp/double-free and cpp/use-after-free find fewer false positives in cases where a non-returning function is called.
• The number of duplicated dataflow paths reported by queries has been significantly reduced.

No user-facing changes.

• Added a new query, cpp/invalid-pointer-deref, to detect out-of-bounds pointer reads and writes.

• The "Comparison where assignment was intended" query (cpp/compare-where-assign-meant) no longer reports comparisons that appear in macro expansions.
• Some queries that had repeated results corresponding to different levels of indirection for argv now only have a single result.
• The cpp/non-constant-format query no longer considers an assignment on the right-hand side of another assignment to be a source of non-constant format strings. As a result, the query may now produce fewer results.

No user-facing changes.

No user-facing changes.

• The cpp/uninitialized-local query now excludes uninitialized uses that are explicitly cast to void and are expression statements. As a result, the query will report less false positives.

• The cpp/comparison-with-wider-type query now correctly handles relational operations on signed operators. As a result the query may find more results.

No user-facing changes.

• Added a new query, cpp/overrun-write, to detect buffer overflows in C-style functions that manipulate buffers.

No user-facing changes.

• A new query cpp/double-free has been added. The query finds possible cases of deallocating the same pointer twice. The precision of the query has been set to "medium".
• The query cpp/use-after-free has been modernized and assigned the precision "medium". The query finds cases of where a pointer is dereferenced after its memory has been deallocated.

• The query cpp/redundant-null-check-simple has been promoted to Code Scanning. The query finds cases where a pointer is compared to null after it has already been dereferenced. Such comparisons likely indicate a bug at the place where the pointer is dereferenced, or where the pointer is compared to null.

• The query cpp/tainted-arithmetic now also flags possible overflows in arithmetic assignment operations.

No user-facing changes.

• The NetworkToBufferSizeConfiguration and UntrustedDataToExternalApiConfig dataflow configurations have been deprecated. Please use NetworkToBufferSizeFlow and UntrustedDataToExternalApiFlow.
• The LeapYearCheckConfiguration, FiletimeYearArithmeticOperationCheckConfiguration, and PossibleYearArithmeticOperationCheckConfiguration dataflow configurations have been deprecated. Please use LeapYearCheckFlow, FiletimeYearArithmeticOperationCheckFlow and PossibleYearArithmeticOperationCheckFlow.

No user-facing changes.

No user-facing changes.

No user-facing changes.

• The cpp/no-space-for-terminator and cpp/uncontrolled-allocation-size queries have been enhanced with heuristic detection of allocations. These queries now find more results.

• The AlertSuppression.ql query has been updated to support the new // codeql[query-id] supression comments. These comments can be used to suppress an alert and must be placed on a blank line before the alert. In addition the legacy // lgtm and // lgtm[query-id] comments can now also be placed on the line before an alert.
• The cpp/missing-check-scanf query no longer reports the free'ing of scanf output variables as potential reads.

No user-facing changes.

No user-facing changes.

No user-facing changes.

• Fixed a bug in cpp/jsf/av-rule-76 that caused the query to miss results when an implicitly-defined copy constructor or copy assignment operator was generated.

• Added a new medium-precision query, cpp/comma-before-misleading-indentation, which detects instances of whitespace that have readability issues.

• The "Unterminated variadic call" (cpp/unterminated-variadic-call) query has been tuned to produce fewer false positive results.
• Fixed false positives from the "Unused static function" (cpp/unused-static-function) query in files that had errors during compilation.

• The alert message of many queries have been changed to better follow the style guide and make the message consistent with other languages.

• Added a new medium-precision query, cpp/missing-check-scanf, which detects scanf output variables that are used without a proper return-value check to see that they were actually written. A variation of this query was originally contributed as an experimental query by @ihsinme.

• Modernizations from "Cleartext storage of sensitive information in buffer" (cpp/cleartext-storage-buffer) have been ported to the "Cleartext storage of sensitive information in file" (cpp/cleartext-storage-file), "Cleartext transmission of sensitive information" (cpp/cleartext-transmission) and "Cleartext storage of sensitive information in an SQLite database" (cpp/cleartext-storage-database) queries. These changes may result in more correct results and fewer false positive results from these queries.
• The alert message of many queries have been changed to make the message consistent with other languages.

• The "Cleartext storage of sensitive information in buffer" (cpp/cleartext-storage-buffer) query has been improved to produce fewer false positives.

• The query cpp/bad-strncpy-size now covers more strncpy-like functions than before, including strxfrm(_l), wcsxfrm(_l), and stpncpy. Users of this query may see an increase in results.

• Contextual queries and the query libraries they depend on have been moved to the codeql/cpp-all package.

• The "XML external entity expansion" (cpp/external-entity-expansion) query precision has been increased to high.
• The cpp/unused-local-variable no longer ignores functions that include if and switch statements with C++17-style initializers.

• The "XML external entity expansion" (cpp/external-entity-expansion) query has been extended to support a broader selection of XML libraries and interfaces.

• An new query cpp/external-entity-expansion has been added. The query detects XML objects that are vulnerable to external entity expansion (XXE) attacks.

• The cpp/cleartext-transmission query now recognizes additional sources, for sensitive private data such as e-mail addresses and credit card numbers.
• The cpp/unused-local-variable no longer ignores functions that include lambda expressions capturing trivially copyable objects.
• The cpp/command-line-injection query now takes into account calling contexts across string concatenations. This removes false positives due to mismatched calling contexts before and after string concatenations.
• A new query, "Potential exposure of sensitive system data to an unauthorized control sphere" (cpp/potential-system-data-exposure) has been added. This query is focused on exposure of information that is highly likely to be sensitive, whereas the similar query "Exposure of system data to an unauthorized control sphere" (cpp/system-data-exposure) is focused on exposure of information on a channel that is more likely to be intercepted by an attacker.

• The cpp/overflow-destination, cpp/unclear-array-index-validation, and cpp/uncontrolled-allocation-size queries have been modernized and converted to path-problem queries and provide more true positive results.
• The cpp/system-data-exposure query has been increased from medium to high precision, following a number of improvements to the query logic.

• The deprecated queries cpp/duplicate-block, cpp/duplicate-function, cpp/duplicate-class, cpp/duplicate-file, cpp/mostly-duplicate-function,cpp/similar-file, cpp/duplicated-lines-in-files have been removed.

• The predicates and classes in the CodeDuplication library have been deprecated.

• A new query titled "Use of expired stack-address" (cpp/using-expired-stack-address) has been added. This query finds accesses to expired stack-allocated memory that escaped via a global variable.
• A new cpp/insufficient-key-size query has been added to the default query suite for C/C++. The query finds uses of certain cryptographic algorithms where the key size is too small to provide adequate encryption strength.

• The "Failure to use HTTPS URLs" (cpp/non-https-url) has been improved reducing false positive results, and its precision has been increased to 'high'.
• The cpp/system-data-exposure query has been modernized and has converted to a path-problem query. There are now fewer false positive results.

• The CodeDuplication.Copy, CodeDuplication.DuplicateBlock, and CodeDuplication.SimilarBlock classes have been deprecated.

• Added a new query, cpp/open-call-with-mode-argument, to detect when open or openat is called with the O_CREAT or O_TMPFILE flag but when the mode argument is omitted.

• The "Cleartext transmission of sensitive information" (cpp/cleartext-transmission) query has been further improved to reduce false positive results, and upgraded from medium to high precision.
• The "Cleartext transmission of sensitive information" (cpp/cleartext-transmission) query now finds more results, where a password is stored in a struct field or class member variable.
• The cpp/cleartext-storage-file query has been improved, removing false positives where data is written to a standard output stream.
• The cpp/cleartext-storage-buffer query has been updated to use the semmle.code.cpp.dataflow.TaintTracking library.
• The cpp/world-writable-file-creation query now only detects open and openat calls with the O_CREAT or O_TMPFILE flag.

• The security tag has been added to the cpp/return-stack-allocated-memory query. As a result, its results will now appear by default.
• The "Uncontrolled data in arithmetic expression" (cpp/uncontrolled-arithmetic) query has been enhanced to reduce false positive results and its @precision increased to high.
• A new cpp/very-likely-overrunning-write query has been added to the default query suite for C/C++. The query reports some results that were formerly flagged by cpp/overrunning-write.

• Fix an issue with the cpp/declaration-hides-variable query where it would report variables that are unnamed in a database.
• The cpp/cleartext-storage-file query has been upgraded with non-local taint flow and has been converted to a path-problem query.
• The cpp/return-stack-allocated-memory query has been improved to produce fewer false positives. The query has also been converted to a path-problem query.
• The "Cleartext transmission of sensitive information" (cpp/cleartext-transmission) query has been improved in several ways to reduce false positive results.
• The "Potential improper null termination" (cpp/improper-null-termination) query now produces fewer false positive results around control flow branches and loops.
• Added exception for GLib's gboolean to cpp/ambiguously-signed-bit-field. This change reduces the number of false positives in the query.

• A new query cpp/certificate-not-checked has been added for C/C++. The query flags unsafe use of OpenSSL and similar libraries.
• A new query cpp/certificate-result-conflation has been added for C/C++. The query flags unsafe use of OpenSSL and similar libraries.

• A new query cpp/non-https-url has been added for C/C++. The query flags uses of http URLs that might be better replaced with https.