While opening an email attachment, Peter, a customer, receives an error that the application has encountered an unexpected issue and must be shut down. This could be an example of which of the following attacks?
A. Cross-site scripting B. Buffer overflow C. Header manipulation D. Directory traversal
Answer: B
Explanation: When the user opens an attachment, the attachment is loaded into memory. The error is caused by a memory issue due to a buffer overflow attack.
A buffer overflow occurs when a program or process tries to store more data in a buffer (temporary data storage area) than it was intended to hold. Since buffers are created to contain a finite amount of data, the extra information – which has to go somewhere – can overflow into adjacent buffers, corrupting or overwriting the valid data held in them. Although it may occur accidentally through programming error, buffer overflow is an increasingly common type of security attack on data integrity. In buffer overflow attacks, the extra data may contain codes designed to trigger specific actions, in effect sending new instructions to the attacked computer that could, for example, damage the user’s files, change data, or disclose confidential information. Buffer overflow attacks are said to have arisen because the C programming language supplied the framework, and poor programming practices supplied the vulnerability.