Michael Howard's Spot the security bug problem.

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Mugunth - 29 Feb 2008 13:29 GMT

Do anyone know the answer to this problem?

Int16 req;
...
while (true) {
getRequest();
req++;
arr[req] = DateTime.Now;
}

Can you spot this code flaw?

From this link...
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972827.aspx

-
Mugunth

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Marc Gravell - 29 Feb 2008 13:53 GMT

Well, eventually req could wrap around (assuming unchecked), causing an
OutOfRangeException due to -ve index, but...? Nothing obviously security
related, (assuming that everything we need to know is in the question).

Marc

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Jesse Houwing - 29 Feb 2008 18:17 GMT

Hello Marc,

> Well, eventually req could wrap around (assuming unchecked), causing
> an OutOfRangeException due to -ve index, but...? Nothing obviously
> security related, (assuming that everything we need to know is in the
> question).

That means that if you send it enough requests the app will crash pretty
quickly, which could be seen as a DoS attack. Though I find it a bit far
fetched in the context it is presented.

--
Jesse Houwing
jesse.houwing at sogeti.nl

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Mufaka - 29 Feb 2008 16:04 GMT

I don't know if we really have enough info, but index 0 *appears* to be
skipped.

while (true) {
getRequest();
arr[req] = DateTime.Now;
req++;
}

> Do anyone know the answer to this problem?
>
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
> -
> Mugunth

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Michael Howard's Spot the security bug problem.

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