Advanced Windows Debugging

Chapter 6. Memory Corruption Part II—Heaps

In Chapter 5, “Memory Corruption Part I—Stacks,” we discussed how stack-based buffer overflows can cause serious security problems for software and how stackbased buffer overflows have been the primary attack angle for malicious software authors. In recent years, however, another form of buffer overflow attack has gained in popularity. Rather than relying on the stack to exploit buffer overflows, the Windows heap manager is now being targeted. Even though heap-based security attacks are much harder to exploit than their stack-based counterparts, their popularity keeps growing at a rapid pace. In addition to potential security vulnerabilities, this chapter discusses a myriad of stability issues that can ...