Monitoring Buffer Overflow Attacks: A Perennial Task

Abstract

Buffer overflow (BOF) is a well-known, and one of the worst and oldest, vulnerabilities in programs. BOF attacks overwrite data buffers and introduce wide ranges of attacks like execution of arbitrary injected code. Many approaches are applied to mitigate buffer overflow vulnerabilities; however, mitigating BOF vulnerabilities is a perennial task as these vulnerabilities elude the mitigation efforts and appear in the operational programs at run-time. Monitoring is a popular approach for detecting BOF attacks during program execution, and it can prevent or send warnings to take actions for avoiding the consequences of the exploitations. Currently, there is no detailed classification of the proposed monitoring approaches to understand their common characteristics, objectives, and limitations. In this paper, the authors classify runtime BOF attack monitoring and prevention approaches based on seven major characteristics. Finally, these approaches are compared for attack detection coverage based on a set of BOF attack types. The classification will enable researchers and practitioners to select an appropriate BOF monitoring approach or provide guidelines to build a new one.