Protecting Against Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) Compromises and Return-to-Libc Attacks Using Network Intrusion Detection Systems

DAY, David and ZHAO, Zhengxu (2011). Protecting Against Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) Compromises and Return-to-Libc Attacks Using Network Intrusion Detection Systems. International Journal of Automation and Computing, 8 (4), 472-483.

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Abstract

Writable XOR eXecutable (W XOR X) and Address Space Layout Randomisation (ASLR), have elevated the understanding necessary to perpetrate buffer overflow exploits [1]. However, they have not proved to be a panacea [1] [2] [3] and so other mechanisms such as stack guards and prelinking have been introduced. In this paper we show that host based protection still does not offer a complete solution. To demonstrate, we perform an over the network brute force return-to-libc attack against a pre-forking concurrent server to gain remote access to W XOR X and ASLR. We then demonstrate that deploying a NIDS with appropriate signatures can detect this attack efficiently.

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