Buffer
Overflow Causes. ©2002, Jedidiah R. Crandall, Susan L. Gerhart, Jan G.
Hogle.
http://sfsecurity.pr.erau.edu
Types of buffer overflow attacks
Stack smashing
or heap-based attacks
•The attacker can hijack execution of the program, and if
the program was running with elevated
privileges, the attacker now has those privileges
•This is the way many worms
spread by tricking a network server into running
the a program the attacker wrote
Data
corruption
•An attacker can change their
privileges or other security-related data by overwriting it in memory
Program
crash
•A program crash can lead to
denial-of-service because the service that program was providing will not be there until the program
is restarted
•Sometimes a program crash
causes a “core dump” where the entire memory of the
program (possibly security-sensitive data) is written out to a file the attacker may be able to read