Archive for June 28th, 2009

Jun
28
2009

PHP: Buffer Overflow

PHP Program Flow
A call that is made to execute a sequence of code in PHP program is sent to PHP core library written in C programming language which in turn would talk with the underlying operating system to get the results of its execution.

What is buffer?
A buffer is a temporary memory location to hold data for faster program execution time. The data may be stored as a heap or as a stack. Stack can be visualized as a FILO array of data and heap as a linked list of data.

Why we need to take care of buffer overflows?
Programmers who know about certain loop holes can exploit this feature in by pointing a record in the heap or stack to prewritten block of hackable code. These are called buffer overflow attacks.
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