Buffer Overflow Attacks

Description:

Will the Code You Write Today, Headline Tomorrow’s BugTraq Mail List?
Forensic investigations of notorious Internet attacks, such as the SQL Slammer and Blaster Worms, reveal buffer overflows to be the sophisticated hacker’s “vulnerability of choice.” These worms crippled the Internet and cost billions of dollars to clean up. Now, even more powerful and insidious threats have appeared in the form of “custom exploits.”

These one-time only exploits are custom crafted to attack your enterprise, making them even more difficult to detect and defend. No catchy names, no media coverage; just your own personal disaster.

James C. Foster’s Buffer Overflow Attacks clearly demonstrates that the only way to defend against the endless variety of buffer overflow attacks is to implement a comprehensive design, coding and test plan for all of your applications. From Dave Aitel’s Foreword through the last appendix, this is the only book dedicated exclusively to detecting, exploiting, and preventing buffer overflow attacks. In Buffer Overflow Attacks, you will see:

Includes Numbered-by-Line Exploit Code Examples That Illustrate the Differences Between Stack Overflows, Heap Corruption, and Format String Bugs
Provides Case Studies for Most Major Platforms and Environments, Including Windows, FreeBSD, FrontPage, and Linux,
Avoid Worm or Custom Exploits by Analyzing Your Source Code to Detect Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities
The SANS Institute maintains a list of the "Top 10 Software Vulnerabilities." At the current time, over half of these vulnerabilities are exploitable by Buffer Overflow attacks, making this class of attack one of the most common and most dangerous weapon used by malicious attackers. This is the first book specifically aimed at detecting, exploiting, and preventing the most common and dangerous attacks.

Almost all of the most devastating computer attacks to hit the Internet in recent years including SQL Slammer, Blaster, and I Love You attacks. If executed properly, an overflow vulnerability will allow an attacker to run arbitrary code on the victim’s machine with the equivalent rights of whichever process was overflowed. This is often used to provide a remote shell onto the victim machine, which can be used for further exploitation.

A buffer overflow is an unexpected behavior that exists in certain programming languages. This book provides specific, real code examples on exploiting buffer overflow attacks from a hacker's perspective and defending against these attacks for the software developer.