CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cbuffer-overflowrealpath
Jake
Jake

Reputation: 16837

Potential buffer overflow when using realpath() in C

I am reading this link related to secure coding in C. It contains the following paragraph:

In C and C++ programming languages, some functions take string as input. Examples include realpath(), syslog() and getopt(). When such functions are injected with an extensive amount of input buffer, a buffer overflow attack can take place. As such, a good coder will establish the greatest possible length of such input string required for a particular program and shorten input strings appropriately prior to invoking the realpath(), syslog() and getopt() functions.

Taking realpath() as example, the function signature is:

char *realpath(const char *path, char *resolved_path);

Based on the function signature, when someone calls this, they would have allocated and filled in the memory for the path argument. If the memory size allocated for the resolved_path result is not large enough, it may cause overflow. Is this analysis correct ? I'm not sure why the link I gave above says buffer overflow due to extensive amount of input buffer.

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