Certifying the Absence of Buffer Overflows
• SEI Report
Publisher
Software Engineering Institute
CMU/SEI Report Number
CMU/SEI-2006-TN-030DOI (Digital Object Identifier)
10.1184/R1/6572210.v1Topic or Tag
Abstract
Despite increased awareness and efforts to reduce buffer overflows, they continue to be the cause of most software vulnerabilities. In large part, these problems are due to the widespread use of unsafe library routines among programmers. For reasons like efficiency, such routines will continue to be used, even during the development of mission-critical and safety-critical software systems. Effective certification techniques are needed to ascertain whether unsafe routines are used in a safe manner.
This report presents a technique for certifying the safety of buffer manipulations in C programs. The approach is based on two key ideas: (1) using a certifying model checker to automatically verify that a buffer manipulation is safe and (2) validating the resulting invariant and proving it with a decision procedure based on Boolean satisfiability. This report also discusses the advantages and limitations of the approach with respect to today's existing solutions for buffer-overflow detection. Experimental results are presented that position the technique favorably against other static overflow-detection tools and indicate that the procedure can complement and augment these tools from a purely verification perspective.
Cite This SEI Report
Chaki, S., & Hissam, S. (2006, September 1). Certifying the Absence of Buffer Overflows. (SEI Report CMU/SEI-2006-TN-030). Retrieved October 25, 2026, from https://doi.org/10.1184/R1/6572210.v1.
@techreport{chaki_2006,
author={Chaki, Sagar and Hissam, Scott},
title={Certifying the Absence of Buffer Overflows},
month={Sep},
year={2006},
number={{CMU/SEI-2006-TN-030},
institution={Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University},
doi={10.1184/R1/6572210.v1},
url={https://doi.org/10.1184/R1/6572210.v1},
note={Accessed: 2026-Oct-25}
}
Chaki, Sagar, and Scott Hissam. "Certifying the Absence of Buffer Overflows." (CMU/SEI-2006-TN-030). Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. Software Engineering Institute, September 1, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1184/R1/6572210.v1.
S. Chaki, and S. Hissam, "Certifying the Absence of Buffer Overflows," Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. Software Engineering Institute, SEI Report CMU/SEI-2006-TN-030, 1-Sep-2006 [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.1184/R1/6572210.v1. [Accessed: 25-Oct-2026].
Chaki, Sagar, and Scott Hissam. "Certifying the Absence of Buffer Overflows." (SEI Report CMU/SEI-2006-TN-030). Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Software Engineering Institute, 1 Sep. 2006. https://doi.org/10.1184/R1/6572210.v1. Accessed 25 Oct. 2026.
Chaki, Sagar; & Hissam, Scott. Certifying the Absence of Buffer Overflows. CMU/SEI-2006-TN-030. Software Engineering Institute. 2006. DOI: 10.1184/R1/6572210.v1. https://doi.org/10.1184/R1/6572210.v1