A simplified integer overflow detection method based on path relaxation is described for avoiding buffer overflow triggered by integer overflow. When the integer overflow refers to the size of the buffer allocated dynamically, this kind of integer overflow is most likely to trigger buffer overflow. Based on this discovery, through lightly static program analysis, the solution traces the key variables referring to the size of a buffer allocated dynamically and it maintains the upper bound and lower bound of these variables. After the constraint information of these traced variables is inserted into the original program, this method tests the program with test cases through path relaxation, which means that it not only reports the errors revealed by the current runtime value of traced variables contained in the test case, but it also examines the errors possibly occurring under the same execution path with all the possible values of the traced variables. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated in a case study. Compared with the traditional buffer overflow detection methods, this method reduces the burden of detection and improves efficiency.
