How Do Buffer Overflows Work?
Buffer overflows take advantage of the way in which information is stored by computer programs. On a computer, memory or RAM is the area where data that is being executed is stored or variables that are going to be accessed by a program are kept. Memory is volatile, which means that when the computer is turned off, anything stored in memory is lost. Because memory is very fast, it is used to store information that will be needed by the computer to run programs. For long-term storage, hard drives or other storage media are used, which can store the data even when the power is turned off, yet they utilize slower access speeds.
In general, when a program calls a subroutine, the function variables and the subroutine ...
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