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Software Engineering vocabulary · Debugging and Troubleshooting

Buffer overflow

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounCommon term

In software engineering, buffer overflow means: A write beyond the allocated boundary of a memory buffer, which may damage other data or cause a crash.

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How it is used

Used in low-level debugging and security reviews. The problem is out-of-bounds writing, not simply a full queue.

Example sentences

  1. A missing length check allowed a buffer overflow in the native file reader.

    Input larger than the destination was copied without checking its capacity.

  2. The test caught a buffer overflow when the terminator was written past the final byte.

    Even a one-byte write beyond the boundary counts as an overflow.

Common collocations

  • prevent a buffer overflow
  • buffer overflow detection
  • off-by-one errorA common bug where a loop or calculation goes one step too far or stops one step too early, often because counting starts at zero.
  • vulnerabilityA weakness in software, hardware, a configuration or a process that an attacker could use to cause harm or to gain access they should not have.

More terms: Debugging and Troubleshooting

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