IT lexicon Security Buffer overflow

Buffer overflow

Security På svenska → Updated: 2026-05-23

Writing past the bounds of a buffer in memory — overlaps neighbours, can lead to arbitrary code execution.

Classic C bug: strcpy(buf, input) without length check. Drove 30+ years of exploits. Defences: ASLR, stack canaries, DEP/NX, modern languages (Rust). "Stack smashing" and "heap spray" are variants.

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