A Novel and Fine-grained Heap Randomization Allocation Strategy for Effectively Alleviating Heap Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities

Jin, Zhigang; Chen, Yongfu; Tian, Lei; Li, Kai; Wang, Zhenting; Zheng, Jiongzhi

doi:10.1145/3325730.3325738

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…An attacker achieves malicious intent by diverting the control flow of the firmware to malicious code and executing it [86]. Several solutions to defend against such attacks include control-flow integrity (CFI) [87], randomization-based [88] and enforcement-based [89] methods.…”

Section: Firmware Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A review of security issues and solutions for precision health in Internet-of-Medical-Things systems

et al. 2023

Security and Safety

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Precision medicine provides a holistic view of a person’s health that combines genes, environment and lifestyle, aiming at realizing the individualized therapy. With the developing of Internet of Things (IOT) devices, widespread emergence of Electronic Medical Records (EMR), booming of cloud computing and artificial intelligence, it provides an opportunity to collect the healthcare big data throughout the lifespan and analyze the disease risk at all stages of life. Thus, precision medicine is shifting to the focus from treatment to prediction and prevention, namely precision health. To achieve this goal, different types of data, such as omics, imaging, EMR, continuous physiological monitoring, lifestyle, and environmental information need to be collected, tracked, managed and shared. For this purpose, Internet-of-Medical Things (IoMT) is playing a vital role in bringing together the health systems, applications, services and devices, that can improve the speed and accuracy of diagnosis and treatments, and monitor and modify patient behaviour and health status in real time. However, due to the proliferation of IoMT devices, security has become a growing concern. The increasing interconnectivity of IoMT-enabled devices with the health data reception, transmission, and processing significantly increases the number of potential vulnerabilities within a system. To address the security issues for precision health in IoMT systems, in this article, we review the state-of-the-art techniques and schemes from the perspective of a hierarchical system architecture. We present an IoMT system model consisting of three layers: the sensing layer, the network layer and the cloud infrastructure layer. In each layer, we discuss the security vulnerabilities and threats, and review the existing security techniques and schemes corresponding to the system components and their functionalities. Due to the unique nature of biometric features in medical and health services, we highlight the biometrics-based technologies applied in IoMT systems, which makes a great difference from the security solutions in other existing IoT systems. Finally, we summarize the challenges and future research directions in IoMT systems for a better and more secure future of precision health.

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Section: Firmware Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A review of security issues and solutions for precision health in Internet-of-Medical-Things systems

et al. 2023

Security and Safety

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“…The position of each object was randomized using source code information so that attackers cannot predict the stack layout. [8] performed randomization for the entire heap memory area by proposing a random memory block allocation algorithm. It is similar to our study in that randomization is performed in the heap memory area, but the detailed process to obtain the randomization effect is different.…”

Section: Memory Randomizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Various vulnerabilities are also likely to exist in the heap memory area as the heap is dynamically allocat-ed at runtime and it is usually more complicatedly constructed than the stack memory buffers [7]. Similarly, to stack situations, multiple defense systems including address space layout randomization (ASLR) are proposed as a part of the compiler feature or heap-allocator's runtime verification logic [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effective Memory Diversification in Legacy Systems

Yun

Jang

2023

Int. j. electr. comput. eng. syst. (Online)

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Memory corruption error is one of the critical security attack vectors against a wide range of software. Addressing this problem, modern compilers provide multiple features to fortify the software against such errors. However, applying compiler-based memory defense is problematic in legacy systems we often encounter in industry or military environments because source codes are unavailable. In this study, we propose memory diversification techniques tailored for legacy binaries to which we cannot apply state-of- the-art compiler-based solutions. The basic idea of our approach is to automatically patch the machine code instructions of each legacy system differently (e.g., a drone, or a vehicle firmware) without altering any semantic behavior of the software logic. As a result of our system, attackers must create a specific attack payload for each target by analyzing the particular firmware, thus significantly increasing exploit development time and cost. Our approach is evaluated by applying it to a stack and heap of multiple binaries, including PX4 drone firmware and other Linux utilities.

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“…6 These attacks normally target weaknesses, flaws, and errors, (commonly referred to as security vulnerabilities) that may cause an explicit failure to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the application. 7 Examples of attacks include: command injection 8 ; buffer overflow 9,10 ; data or path manipulation 11 ; access control 12 ; session hijacking 13 ; and cookie poisoning. 6,14 When the attacks succeed, they can result in data breaches and have other serious security implications.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An empirical comparison of commercial and open‐source web vulnerability scanners

et al. 2020

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Web vulnerability scanners (WVSs) are tools that can detect security vulnerabilities in web services. Although both commercial and open-source WVSs exist, their vulnerability detection capability and performance vary. In this paper, we report on a comparative study to determine the vulnerability detection capabilities of eight WVSs (both open and commercial) using two vulnerable web applications: WebGoat and Damn vulnerable web application (DVWA). The eight WVSs studied were: Acunetix; HP WebInspect; IBM AppScan; OWASP ZAP; S ; Arachni; Vega; and Iron WASP. The performance was evaluated using multiple evaluation metrics: precision; recall; Youden index; OWASP web benchmark evaluation (WBE); and the web application security scanner evaluation criteria (WASSEC). The experimental results show that, while the commercial scanners are effective in detecting security vulnerabilities, some open-source scanners (such as ZAP and Skipfish) can also be effective. In summary, this study recommends improving the vulnerability detection capabilities of both the open-source and commercial scanners to enhance code coverage and the detection rate, and to reduce the number of false-positives.

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A Novel and Fine-grained Heap Randomization Allocation Strategy for Effectively Alleviating Heap Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities

Cited by 3 publications

References 22 publications

A review of security issues and solutions for precision health in Internet-of-Medical-Things systems

A review of security issues and solutions for precision health in Internet-of-Medical-Things systems

Effective Memory Diversification in Legacy Systems

An empirical comparison of commercial and open‐source web vulnerability scanners

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