Page History

Avoid excessive stack allocations, particularly in situations where the growth of the stack can be controlled or influenced by an attacker. See INT04-C. Enforce limits on integer values originating from tainted sources for more information on preventing attacker-controlled integers from exhausting memory.

Noncompliant Code Example

...

int copy_file(FILE *src, FILE *dst, size_t bufsize) {
  if (bufsize == 0) {
    /* Handle error */
  }
  char *buf = (char *)malloc(bufsize);
  if (!buf) {
    return -1;/* Handle error */
  }

  while (fgets(buf, bufsize, src)) {
    if (fputs(buf, dst) == EOF) {
      /* Handle error */
    }
  }
  /* ... */
  free(buf);
  return 0;
}

...

Automated Detection

Related Vulnerabilities

Stack overflow has been implicated in Toyota unintended acceleration cases, where Camry and other Toyota vehicles accelerated unexpectedly.  Michael Barr testified at the trial that a stack overflow could corrupt the critical variables of the operating system, because they were located in memory adjacent to the top of the stack [Samek 2014].

...

...