Activity 1 - Buffer Overflows in C

Abstract

This is the first in a series of activities designed to teach students about stack smashing attacks and defenses. This specific activity teaches students about the concept of buffer overflows and how there is a potential for their occurence in C programs that accept command-line parameters and use unsafe functions such as strcpy().

Level: Undergraduate
Setting: Classroom
Type: Learning Cycle
Discipline: Computer Science
Course: Cybersecurity
Keywords:  buffer overflow, memory, string copy, unsafe functions