Protecting C Programs from Attacks via Invalid Pointer Dereferences

Writes via unchecked pointer dereferences rank high among vulnerabilities most often exploited by malicious code. The most common attacks use an unchecked string copy to cause a bu#er overrun, thereby overwriting the return address in the function's activation record. Then, when the function "returns", control is actually transferred to the attacker's code. Other attacks may overwrite function pointers, setjmp bu#ers, system-call arguments, or simply corrupt data to cause a denial of service