Analyzing String Buffers in C

Simon, Axel and King, Andy (2002) Analyzing String Buffers in C. In: Kirchner, Hélène and Ringeissen, Christophe, eds. International Conference on Algebraic Methodology and Software Technology. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2422 . Springer, pp. 365-379. ISBN 3-540-44144-1. (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45719-4_25) (Full text available)

Abstract

A buffer overrun occurs in a C program when input is read into a buffer whose length exceeds that of the buffer. Overruns often lead to crashes and are a widespread form of security vulnerability. This paper describes an analysis for detecting overruns before deployment which is conservative in the sense that it locates every possible buffer overrun. The paper details the subtle relationship between overrun analysis and pointer analysis and explains how buffers can be modeled with a linear number of variables. As far as we know, the paper gives the first formal account of how this software and security problem can be tackled with abstract interpretation, setting it on a firm, mathematical basis.

Item Type:	Book section
Additional information:	Also see http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/index.html
Uncontrolled keywords:	abstract interpretation, C, buffer overflows
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics (inc Computing science) > QA 76 Software, computer programming,
Divisions:	Faculties > Sciences > School of Computing > Theoretical Computing Group
Depositing User:	Andy King
Date Deposited:	24 Nov 2008 17:59 UTC
Last Modified:	11 Jul 2014 10:25 UTC
Resource URI:	https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/13750 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)