What kind of attack is this program susceptible to?

The programmers on your team are analyzing the free, open source software being used to run FTP services on a server. They notice that there is an excessive number of fgets() and gets() on the source code. These C++ functions do not check bounds.

What kind of attack is this program susceptible to?
A . Buffer of Overflow
B . Denial of Service
C . Shatter Attack
D . Password Attack

View Answer

Answer: A

Explanation:

C users must avoid using dangerous functions that do not check bounds unless they’ve ensured that the bounds will never get exceeded. A buffer overflow occurs when you write a set of values (usually a string of characters) into a fixed length buffer and write at least one value outside that buffer’s boundaries (usually past its end). A buffer overflow can occur when reading input from the user into a buffer, but it can also occur during other kinds of processing in a program.