Module Two Buffer Overflow Activity

Overview

You are a senior software developer on a team of software developers who are responsible for a large banking web application. Your manager has learned that there is some code that seems to randomly change customer account numbers. The other developers spent a lot of time tracing down the issue, and they narrowed it down to when a user inputs a number. Under some circumstances, this resulted in changing the account number. The team has tried a few things, but they are stumped.

Following some guidance from an older testing guide, the developers isolated enough to replicate the problem in a standalone test case. Doing this allowed them to reliably show how to trigger the buffer overflow. However, they don’t know what to do to prevent it in the future. They came to you for help.

You will learn to do the following:

• Detect when a buffer overflow is about to happen
• Write code to prevent a buffer overflow
• Decide how to react when the user attempts a buffer overflow
• Protect your code from a buffer overflow

Prompt

This assignment presents code that collects a number from the user and then displays the number and a secret account number. Entering too many characters triggers the overwrite of the account number. Using the existing source code as a starting point, you need to prevent the user input from impacting the account number.

• The source code has been commented using TODO to explain the detailed rules you must follow.
• There may be more than one way to solve this problem. It is key to demonstrate that your implementation prevents the users from modifying the account number through entering too much data.
• Do not forget that you can leverage capabilities provided by the standard C++ library to help you achieve success.

Please comment on any changes you make in the code to explain the logic, formulas, or data types you are adding. You will also create a brief written summary of the approach taken, why it will stop the overflow or underflow, any issues you encountered, and how you resolved those issues.

Specifically, you will prepare the following:

• Buffer overflow defensive coding solutions
• C/C++ program functionality and best practices
• A summary of your process in a Word document that contains a screenshot of the application console output