Editing Buffer overflow protection (section)

==Bounds checking==
{{Main|Bounds checking}}

Bounds checking is a compiler-based technique that adds run-time bounds information for each allocated block of memory, and checks all pointers against those at run-time. For C and C++, bounds checking can be performed at pointer calculation time<ref name="joneskelly">{{cite web |url=http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~phjk/BoundsChecking.html |title=Bounds Checking for C |publisher=Doc.ic.ac.uk |access-date=2014-04-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160326081542/https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~phjk/BoundsChecking.html |archive-date=2016-03-26 |url-status=dead }}</ref> or at dereference time.<ref name="safecodesva">{{cite web|url=http://sva.cs.illinois.edu/sva.html |title=SAFECode: Secure Virtual Architecture |publisher=Sva.cs.illinois.edu |date=2009-08-12 |access-date=2014-04-27}}</ref><ref name="asan">{{cite web|url=https://code.google.com/p/address-sanitizer/|title=google/sanitizers|date=19 June 2021}}</ref><ref name="failsafec">{{cite web |url=http://staff.aist.go.jp/y.oiwa/FailSafeC/index-en.html |title=Fail-Safe C: Top Page |publisher=Staff.aist.go.jp |date=2013-05-07 |access-date=2014-04-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160707163127/https://staff.aist.go.jp/y.oiwa/FailSafeC/index-en.html |archive-date=2016-07-07 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Implementations of this approach use either a central repository, which describes each allocated block of memory,<ref name="joneskelly"/><ref name="safecodesva"/><ref name="asan"/> or [[fat pointer]]s,<ref name="failsafec"/> which contain both the pointer and additional data, describing the region that they point to.