Q14Information Security Systems
Question
4 marks
What is a Buffer Overflow attack, and how can it be mitigated?
Answer
Buffer overflow occurs when more data is written to a buffer than it can hold.
A buffer overflow anomaly happens when a program writes data beyond the boundaries of pre-allocated fixed-length memory buffers. Attackers exploit this to overwrite adjacent memory, which can corrupt data, crash the application, or execute malicious injected code. It can be mitigated by using safe programming languages, implementing bounds checking (like strncpy instead of strcpy in C), using Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), and enabling Data Execution Prevention (DEP).