US Patent 8037529 Buffer overflow vulnerability detection and patch generation system and method

A computer-implemented method includes identifying a buffer overflow vulnerability in a vulnerable program including identifying a victim buffer creation site that created a victim buffer and identifying a vulnerability site that overflowed the victim buffer. A patch is created for the vulnerable program to prevent the vulnerability site from overflowing a potential victim buffer created by the victim buffer creation site. In this manner, the information obtained in identifying the buffer overflow vulnerability is used to automatically derive a patch that accurately seals the vulnerability, greatly reduces the false positive and negative rate, while at the same time shortens the response time to new threats.