What is a difference between SQL injection and buffer overflow attacks?

SQL injection manipulates database queries to extract or modify data, not directly read from the application's memory; buffer overflow involves writing beyond a buffer, which overwrites adjacent memory.

SQL injection attacks exploit vulnerabilities in input fields of web applications to insert malicious SQL code, primarily targeting the underlying database to read, modify, or delete data. Buffer overflow attacks occur when a program writes data beyond the allocated buffer in memory, often leading to execution of arbitrary code within the application's process space.

While SQL injection often targets web applications interacting with databases, and buffer overflows can target various software, stating SQL injection targets 'websites' and buffer overflow targets 'software' is less precise than specifying the components they exploit.

Both SQL injection and buffer overflow attacks can often be executed remotely without needing local access to the target system.