CISA Certified Information Systems Auditor – Question1807

Which of the following kinds of function are particularly vulnerable to format string attacks?

A.
C functions that perform output formatting
B. C functions that perform integer computation
C. C functions that perform real number subtraction
D. VB functions that perform integer conversion
E. SQL functions that perform string conversion
F. SQL functions that perform text conversion

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

Explanation:
Format string attacks are a new class of vulnerabilities recently discovered. It can be used to crash a program or to execute harmful code. The problem stems from the use of unfiltered user input as the format string parameter in certain C functions that perform formatting, such as print (). A malicious user may use the %s and %x format tokens, among others, to print data from the stack or possibly other locations in memory. One may also write arbitrary data to arbitrary locations using the %n format token.