Prevent Buffer Overflows

Application developers can prevent buffer overflows by building security measures into their development code, using programming languages that include built-in protection, and regularly testing code to detect and fix errors.

One of the most common methods for preventing buffer overflows is avoiding standard library functions that have not been bounds-checked, which includes gets, scanf, and strcpy. Another common method is to prevent buffer overruns by using bounds-checking that is enforced at runtime. This automatically checks that the data written to a buffer is within the appropriate boundaries.

Modern operating systems now deploy runtime protection that enables additional security against buffer overflows.