diff --git a/lib/checkbufferoverrun.cpp b/lib/checkbufferoverrun.cpp
index 2dc2a5e21..066117d77 100644
--- a/lib/checkbufferoverrun.cpp
+++ b/lib/checkbufferoverrun.cpp
@@ -1297,6 +1297,10 @@ void CheckBufferOverrun::checkGlobalAndLocalVariable()
                     negativeMemoryAllocationSizeError(tok);
                 }
 
+                /** @todo false negatives: this may be too conservative */
+                if (!var || !var->isPointer() || var->typeStartToken()->next() != var->typeEndToken())
+                    continue;
+
                 // malloc() gets count of bytes and not count of
                 // elements, so we should calculate count of elements
                 // manually
diff --git a/test/testbufferoverrun.cpp b/test/testbufferoverrun.cpp
index 5694e9d1e..6d9bda351 100644
--- a/test/testbufferoverrun.cpp
+++ b/test/testbufferoverrun.cpp
@@ -3093,6 +3093,13 @@ private:
               "    tab4[20] = 0;\n"
               "}");
         ASSERT_EQUALS("[test.cpp:4]: (error) Array 'tab4[20]' accessed at index 20, which is out of bounds.\n", errout.str());
+
+        check("void f() {\n" // #8721
+              "  unsigned char **cache = malloc(32);\n"
+              "  cache[i] = malloc(65536);\n"
+              "  cache[i][0xFFFF] = 0;\n"
+              "}");
+        ASSERT_EQUALS("", errout.str());
     }
 
     // statically allocated buffer