Performing calculations on user-controlled data can result in integer overflows unless the input is validated.

If the user is free to enter very large numbers, even arithmetic operations that would usually result in a small change in magnitude may result in overflows.

Always guard against overflow in arithmetic operations on user-controlled data by doing one of the following:

In this example, a value is read from standard input into an int. Because the value is a user-controlled value, it could be extremely large. Performing arithmetic operations on this value could therefore cause an overflow. To avoid this happening, the example shows how to perform a check before performing a multiplication.

  • SEI CERT Oracle Coding Standard for Java: NUM00-J. Detect or prevent integer overflow.