Buffer overflow vulnerability is one of the most widely exploited and dangerous security vulnerabilities, it is extremely difficult to eliminate buffer overflow vulnerability completely. A lot of buffer overflow detection techniques and tools have been proposed in the academy and industrial. In the face of numerous tools, itis a specific and practical issue that how could users choose these tools effectively and applied them to the application aspects such as detection and repair, prevention and protection, measurement and assessment. It is necessary to establish a clear map among different user requirements and multiple buffer overflow detection techniques and tools for sake of solving the problem. On the basis of an overview of the types and characteristics of buffer overflow vulnerabilities, buffer overflow detection techniques ant tools are analyzed and elaborated from three application perspectives, i.e. software life cycle based detection and repair, buffer overflow attack stages based prevention and protection, knowledge and understanding based measurement and assessment, which created a map of user requirement and techniques and tools to a certain degree.