Memory safety

Memory safety is the state of being protected from various software bugs and security vulnerabilities when dealing with memory access, such as buffer overflows and dangling pointers. For example, Java is said to be memory-safe because its runtime error detection checks array bounds and pointer dereferences. In contrast, C and C++ support arbitrary pointer arithmetic, with no provision for bounds checking, and thus are termed memory-unsafe.

Memory errors were first considered in the context of resource management and time-sharing systems, in an effort to avoid problems such as fork bombs. Developments were mostly theoretical until the Morris worm, which exploited a buffer overflow in fingerd. The field of computer security developed quickly thereafter, escalating with multitudes of new attacks such as the return-to-libc attack and defense techniques such as the non-executable stack and address space layout randomization. Randomization prevents most buffer overflow attacks and requires the attacker to use heap spraying or other application-dependent methods to obtain addresses, although its adoption has been slow. However, deployments of the technology are typically limited to randomizing libraries and the location of the stack.

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