Secure Programming with Static Analysis

6. Buffer Overflow

And you may ask yourself: Well, how did I get here? And you may tell yourself My god! What have I done?

–TALKING HEADS

Nearly everyone who uses computers regularly recognizes the name buffer overflow. Many in the software industry understand that the vulnerability involves cramming too much data into too small of a buffer. For many cases, that’s a pretty accurate understanding. A buffer overflow occurs when a program writes data outside the bounds of allocated memory. Buffer overflow vulnerabilities are usually exploited to overwrite values in memory to the advantage of the attacker. Buffer overflow mistakes are plentiful, and they often give an attacker a great deal of control over the vulnerable code. It’s little wonder ...