Re: Possible SERIOUS bug in open()?

Theo de Raadt (deraadt@CVS.OPENBSD.ORG)
Fri, 24 Oct 1997 18:10:32 -0600

> This is far from the only
> place that I've seen problems with unexpected interactions owing to
> surprise negative arguments. Anyone want to take a guess as to what
> strncpy() does when it gets a negative "count" argument? Think that can't
> happen? Think pointer arithmetic.

Yes, but I did a 4 hour or so search in the source tree and didn't
find a single case of such a "strncpy() turning into strcpy()".

It could. But I've not found one. Incorrectly bounded strncat()
calls are far more common, but even then, I can't think of one of
those that we found to be exploitable.