C or C++ : Malloc overflow

Overflow may occur when calculating the size of the allocated memory.

The malloc function allocates a block of memory with the specified argument size and returns a pointer to the beginning of a block. Memory allocated using malloc() function not only includes the user block but also data used to manage the heap (the size of block, pointer to other blocks), thus, a heap overflow may lead to overwriting these control data. This may lead to incorrect behavior, crash of the application or degrading system response time.