locating exploits in open source

["Littlefield, Tyler" <tyler () tysdomain com>]

Hello all:
Before I dive into reverse engineering, I'd like to start off smaller.
I understand bits and pieces of some exploits, so I'd like to start work 
on my own to help contribute somehow. Given source code to a project, 
how do people usually proceed with finding exploits? I've played with 
some, and have some understanding of how they work, but the actual 
figuring out how to make them is beyond me; tips and etc would be welcome.

Here's kind of what I am thinking to get going. There are static 
analysis tools like splint and clang has one as well, that I could run 
over the code and look for "unsafe" functions that I could possibly 
exploit where they are used. Using this I will need a deeper 
understanding of buffer overflows, but I think it can be done. Are there 
other entrypoints to this as well?

Thanks,
Ty

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