Buffer
Overflow Intro. ©2002, Jedidiah R. Crandall, Susan L. Gerhart, Jan G.
Hogle.
http://sfsecurity.pr.erau.edu
Why is this a security problem?
Overflowed data
could be anything.
An integer where 0 means that you cant access a particular file and and 1
means you can. A hacker
would overwrite the 0 with a
1 and access the file.
Characters like ROOT (a highly privileged users)
A pointer that tells the program what instructions to execute next.
Even a minor change could cause the program to crash which can be a security
problem (denial-of-service attacks and core dump exploits are very serious).