An area of memory where data is stored until the computer is ready to accept it Example: Keyboard buffer When you're tapping keys and things don't work, the keys you were entering were going into the keyboard buffer Example: Printer buffer Buffer overflow: programming problem where space that was allocated for buffering has been overrun  Writing more data to array than its capacity, the overflow corrupts important data can be overwritten. (A buffer is an array ) ![[Screenshot 2024-08-08 at 6.10.00 AM.png]] Solution: **Runtime bounds checking** + Code checks if array has enough room to fit new number + Makes it impossible to have buffer overflow: Python, Java + Performance overflow for the code we're running when we insert element into array: C/C++ Software complexity has outpaced our ability to find bugs. Buffers are put into a stack. User-controlled buffer overflow when user takes input, we can overewrite with address of return functions. ![[Screenshot 2024-08-08 at 6.35.57 AM.png]]