Let’s talk about buffer overflow

A buffer overflow, or buffer overrun, occurs when more extra data is put into a fixed-length buffer than the buffer can manage.

Buffer overflow is possibly the best-known form of software security vulnerability. Most software developers know what a buffer overflow vulnerability is, but buffer overflow attacks corresponding to both legacy and newly-developed applications are still quite obvious. Part of the difficulty is due to the wide category of ways buffer overflows can happen, and part is due to the error-prone procedures often used to prevent them.