Section: Threats and Vulnerabilities
Explanation/Reference:
Explanation:
Buffer overflow protection is used to detect the most common buffer overflows by checking that the stack
has not been altered when a function returns. If it has been altered, the program exits with a segmentation
fault. Microsoft's implementation of Data Execution Prevention (DEP) mode explicitly protects the pointer to
the Structured Exception Handler (SEH) from being overwritten.
A buffer overflow occurs when a program or process tries to store more data in a buffer (temporary data
storage area) than it was intended to hold. Since buffers are created to contain a finite amount of data, the
extra information - which has to go somewhere - can overflow into adjacent buffers, corrupting or
overwriting the valid data held in them. Although it may occur accidentally through programming error,
buffer overflow is an increasingly common type of security attack on data integrity. In buffer overflow
attacks, the extra data may contain codes designed to trigger specific actions, in effect sending new
instructions to the attacked computer that could, for example, damage the user's files, change data, or
disclose confidential information. Buffer overflow attacks are said to have arisen because the C
programming language supplied the framework, and poor programming practices supplied the
vulnerability.