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Stack buffer overflow is a type of the more general programming malfunction known as buffer overflow (or buffer overrun). [1] Overfilling a buffer on the stack is more likely to derail program execution than overfilling a buffer on the heap because the stack contains the return addresses for all active function calls.
Visualization of a software buffer overflow. Data is written into A, but is too large to fit within A, so it overflows into B.. In programming and information security, a buffer overflow or buffer overrun is an anomaly whereby a program writes data to a buffer beyond the buffer's allocated memory, overwriting adjacent memory locations.
Stack buffer overflow bugs are caused when a program writes more data to a buffer located on the stack than what is actually allocated for that buffer. This almost always results in corruption of adjacent data on the stack, and in cases where the overflow was triggered by mistake, will often cause the program to crash or operate incorrectly.
Randomization prevents most buffer overflow attacks and requires the attacker to use heap spraying or other application-dependent methods to obtain addresses, although its adoption has been slow. [5] However, deployments of the technology are typically limited to randomizing libraries and the location of the stack.
A "return-to-libc" attack is a computer security attack usually starting with a buffer overflow in which a subroutine return address on a call stack is replaced by an address of a subroutine that is already present in the process executable memory, bypassing the no-execute bit feature (if present) and ridding the attacker of the need to inject their own code.
A buffer overflow; A stack overflow; Attempting to execute a program that does not compile correctly. (Some compilers [which?] will output an executable file despite the presence of compile-time errors.) In C code, segmentation faults most often occur because of errors in pointer use, particularly in C dynamic memory allocation.
A NOP-sled is the oldest and most widely known technique for exploiting stack buffer overflows. [2] It solves the problem of finding the exact address of the buffer by effectively increasing the size of the target area. To do this, much larger sections of the stack are corrupted with the no-op machine instruction.
Storage violation can, for instance, consist of reading from, writing to, or freeing storage not owned by the task. A common type of storage violation is known as a stack buffer overflow where a program attempts to exceed the limits set for its call stack. It can also refer to attempted modification of memory "owned" by another thread where ...