Word.ws English Dictionary

stack smashing

stack smashing noun: the exploitation of a buffer overflow affecting the stack.

Noun

stack smashing (uncountable)

  1. (computer security) The exploitation of a buffer overflow affecting the stack.
    • A stack smashing attack fills up the stack area and modifies the return address to an attacker's desired location.2008 December 17, Asoke K. Talukder, Manish Chaitanya, Architecting Secure Software Systems, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 130

Origin of stack smashing

Popularized by an early description of the technique titled Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit (1996).

Questions about stack smashing

What does stack smashing mean?
Stack smashing means the exploitation of a buffer overflow affecting the stack.
What part of speech is stack smashing?
Stack smashing is a noun.

Words near stack smashing in the dictionary

  1. stack ranked
  2. stack ranking
  3. stack ranks
  4. stack room
  5. stack rooms
  6. stack smashing
  7. stack talk
  8. stack the cards
  9. stack the deck
  10. stack trace
  11. stack traces

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stack smashing (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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