Re: Stack growth direction to thwart buffer overflow attacks

From: Nick Maclaren (nmm1_at_cus.cam.ac.uk)
Date: 08/15/03 

Date: 15 Aug 2003 17:47:48 GMT

In article <Sx7%a.124$mD.56@news.level3.com>,
Barry Margolin <barry.margolin@level3.com> wrote:
>In article <bhi3mc$rgd$1@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>,
>Nick Maclaren <nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>>Firstly, in the case of functions like strcpy, it is NOT much easier
>>to provide the correct length than to do your own checking.
>
>Could you explain this? How could writing your own checking code be easier
>than just adding one parameter to a function call?

Eh? Inserting one line that needs no further information than the
strncpy call you are proposing is a trivial task, even for a third
class BASIC-only programmer. Even if you are writing such shoddy
code that you don't check that you are leaving an unterminated
string to cause problems later, you are only replacing:

    if (strlen(source) < target_length) strcpy(target,source);

by:

    strncpy(target,source,target_length);

If you are writing decent code, you are replacing:

    if (strlen(source) > target_length-1) fail("overflow");
    strcpy(target,source);

by:

    target[target_length-1] = '\0';
    strncpy(target,source,target_length);
    if (target[target_length-1] != '\0') fail("overflow");

NOT a big improvement!

>>One of the common causes of problems is that a 'solution' eliminates
>>enough of the easy cases so that lazy programmers stop even trying
>>to do tackle the problem themselves. In turn, this means that the
>>number of nasty cases increases. As it is common for 90% of the
>>bugs to be easy, but 90% of the problems to be caused by hard bugs,
>>this often REDUCES the overall reliability.
>
>We're talking about programmers who aren't even getting the easy cases
>right. If the cost of preventing 100 easy cases is 10 more nasty cases,
>that seems like a net win.

Think about it. If the cost of a hard case getting past initial coding
is 100 times that of an easy case doing so (which is not unusual), it
is a pretty catastrophic loss.

Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

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