Buffer over-reads can be triggered, as in the Heartbleed bug, by maliciously crafted inputs that are designed to exploit a lack of bounds checking to read parts of memory not intended to be accessible.
Thus, they are the basis of many software vulnerabilities and can be maliciously exploited to access privileged information.
[citation needed] At other times, buffer over-reads not caused by malicious input can lead to crashes if they trigger invalid page faults.
For example, widespread IT outages in 2024 were caused by an out-of-bounds memory error in cybersecurity software developed by CrowdStrike.
[4] Programming languages commonly associated with buffer over-reads include C and C++, which provide no built-in protection against using pointers to access data in any part of virtual memory, and which do not automatically check that reading data from a block of memory is safe; respective examples are attempting to read more elements than contained in an array, or failing to append a trailing terminator to a null-terminated string.