DieHarder: Securing the Heap

Опубликовано 17 августа 2016, 3:14

Heap-based attacks depend on a combination of memory management errors and an exploitable memory allocator. Many allocators include ad hoc countermeasures against particular exploits, but their effectiveness against future exploits has been uncertain. This paper presents the first formal treatment of the impact of allocator design on security. It analyzes a range of widely-deployed memory allocators, including those used by Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD, and shows that they remain vulnerable to attack. It then presents DieHarder, a new allocator whose design was guided by this analysis. DieHarder provides the highest degree of security from heap-based attacks of any practical allocator of which we are aware, while imposing modest performance overhead. In particular, the Firefox web browser runs as fast with DieHarder as with the Linux allocator.