Episode 78: Overflow Vulnerabilities

When a program doesn’t control how much data it processes, memory can be overwritten—and attackers can take control. In this episode, we explore the mechanics and consequences of overflow vulnerabilities: buffer, heap, stack, and integer overflows. You’ll learn how these vulnerabilities are introduced, why low-level programming languages like C are more susceptible, and how attackers exploit them to execute arbitrary code or crash applications.

We also examine how modern systems use defenses like stack canaries, address space layout randomization (ASLR), and non-executable memory regions to mitigate these risks. While CySA+ doesn’t expect you to write exploit code, it does expect you to recognize the indicators of such exploits in logs and threat feeds. This episode helps you build the conceptual foundation to understand how memory corruption leads to compromise—and what to do about it. Brought to you by BareMetalCyber.com