P-TAXI : enforcing memory safety with programmable tagged architecture

Buffer overflow is a well-known problem that remains a threat to software security. With the advancement of code-reuse attacks and return-oriented programming (ROP), it becomes problematic to protect a program from being compromised. Several defenses have been developed in an attempt to defeat code-reuse attacks. However, there is still no solution that provides complete protection with low overhead. In this thesis, we improved TAXI, a ROP defense technique that utilizes a tagged architecture to prevent memory violations. Inspired by Programmable Unit for Metadata Processing (PUMP), we modified TAXI so that enforcement policies can be programmed by user-level code and called it P-TAXI (Programmable TAXI). We demonstrated that, by using P-TAXI, we were able to enforce memory safety policies, including return address protection, stack garbage collection, and memory compartmentalization. In addition, we showed that P-TAXI can be used for debugging and taint tracking.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Kamolpornwijit, Witchakorn

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Howard Shrobe.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/105996

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/105996