From the course: Developing Secure Software

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Buffer overflow attacks

Buffer overflow attacks

From the course: Developing Secure Software

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Buffer overflow attacks

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- [Instructor] Software applications vulnerable to buffer overflow attacks are classic examples of the results of programming decisions adverse to security. Buffer overflow attacks exploit the lack of user input validation. The question here is, how much freedom can you give in terms of what users can provide to the software? The answer should be as little as possible to get the work done. You should be using the least privilege principle here. There are different containers in your main memory, one of which includes an area storing user inputs called buffer. Stack and heap are examples of other containers in the main memory. When an attacker puts too much information into the buffer, it can overflow into other adjacent containers in the primary memory of your computer. This can contaminate the information already stored in these other containers, therefore making the software misbehave. Buffer overflow attacks can crash your program or entire operating system. More sophisticated…

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