Example - 1

This example takes an IP address from a user, verifies that it is well formed and then looks up the hostname and copies it into a buffer.

// /*routine that ensures user_supplied_addr is in the right format for conversion */// 
struct hostent *hp;in_addr_t *addr;char hostname[64];in_addr_t inet_addr(const char *cp);validate_addr_form(user_supplied_addr);addr = inet_addr(user_supplied_addr);hp = gethostbyaddr( addr, sizeof(struct in_addr), AF_INET);strcpy(hostname, hp->h_name);void host_lookup(char *user_supplied_addr){}

This function allocates a buffer of 64 bytes to store the hostname under the assumption that the maximum length value of hostname is 64 bytes, however there is no guarantee that the hostname will not be larger than 64 bytes. If an attacker specifies an address which resolves to a very large hostname, then the function may overwrite sensitive data or even relinquish control flow to the attacker.

Note that this example also contains an unchecked return value (CWE-252) that can lead to a NULL pointer dereference (CWE-476).

Example - 2

In the following example, it is possible to request that memcpy move a much larger segment of memory than assumed:

// /* if chunk info is valid, return the size of usable memory,// 
// * else, return -1 to indicate an error// 
// */// 
...

...memcpy(destBuf, srcBuf, (returnChunkSize(destBuf)-1));...int returnChunkSize(void *) {}int main() {}

If returnChunkSize() happens to encounter an error it will return -1. Notice that the return value is not checked before the memcpy operation (CWE-252), so -1 can be passed as the size argument to memcpy() (CWE-805). Because memcpy() assumes that the value is unsigned, it will be interpreted as MAXINT-1 (CWE-195), and therefore will copy far more memory than is likely available to the destination buffer (CWE-787, CWE-788).

Example - 3

In the following example, the source character string is copied to the dest character string using the method strncpy.

...char source[21] = "the character string";char dest[12];strncpy(dest, source, sizeof(source)-1);...

However, in the call to strncpy the source character string is used within the sizeof call to determine the number of characters to copy. This will create a buffer overflow as the size of the source character string is greater than the dest character string. The dest character string should be used within the sizeof call to ensure that the correct number of characters are copied, as shown below.

...char source[21] = "the character string";char dest[12];strncpy(dest, source, sizeof(dest)-1);...

Example - 4

In this example, the method outputFilenameToLog outputs a filename to a log file. The method arguments include a pointer to a character string containing the file name and an integer for the number of characters in the string. The filename is copied to a buffer where the buffer size is set to a maximum size for inputs to the log file. The method then calls another method to save the contents of the buffer to the log file.

// // saves the file name to a log file// 

// // buffer with size set to maximum size for input to log file// 
// // copy filename to buffer// 
// // save to log file// 
int success;char buf[LOG_INPUT_SIZE];strncpy(buf, filename, length);success = saveToLogFile(buf);return success;#define LOG_INPUT_SIZE 40int outputFilenameToLog(char *filename, int length) {}

However, in this case the string copy method, strncpy, mistakenly uses the length method argument to determine the number of characters to copy rather than using the size of the local character string, buf. This can lead to a buffer overflow if the number of characters contained in character string pointed to by filename is larger then the number of characters allowed for the local character string. The string copy method should use the buf character string within a sizeof call to ensure that only characters up to the size of the buf array are copied to avoid a buffer overflow, as shown below.

// // copy filename to buffer// 
...strncpy(buf, filename, sizeof(buf)-1);...