Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The canonical heap overflow technique overwrites dynamic memory allocation linkage (such as malloc metadata) and uses the resulting pointer exchange to overwrite a program function pointer. For example, on older versions of Linux , two buffers allocated next to each other on the heap could result in the first buffer overwriting the second ...
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.
A heap spray can be used to introduce a large amount of order to compensate for this and increase the chances of successful exploitation. Heap sprays take advantage of the fact that on most architectures and operating systems, the start location of large heap allocations is predictable and consecutive allocations are roughly sequential.
Strings are passed to functions by passing a pointer to the first code unit. Since char * and wchar_t * are different types, the functions that process wide strings are different than the ones processing normal strings and have different names. String literals ("text" in the C source code) are converted to arrays during compilation. [2]
A basic example is in the argv argument to the main function in C (and C++), which is given in the prototype as char **argv—this is because the variable argv itself is a pointer to an array of strings (an array of arrays), so *argv is a pointer to the 0th string (by convention the name of the program), and **argv is the 0th character of the ...
Canaries or canary words or stack cookies are known values that are placed between a buffer and control data on the stack to monitor buffer overflows. When the buffer overflows, the first data to be corrupted will usually be the canary, and a failed verification of the canary data will therefore alert of an overflow, which can then be handled, for example, by invalidating the corrupted data.
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
A code sanitizer is a programming tool that detects bugs in the form of undefined or suspicious behavior by a compiler inserting instrumentation code at runtime. The class of tools was first introduced by Google's AddressSanitizer (or ASan) of 2012, which uses directly mapped shadow memory to detect memory corruption such as buffer overflows or accesses to a dangling pointer (use-after-free).