Marlin: A fine grained randomization approach to defend against ROP attacks

Abstract

Code-reuse attacks, such as return-oriented programming (ROP), bypass defenses against code injection by repurposing existing executable code toward a malicious end. A common feature of these attacks is the reliance on the knowledge of the layout of the executable code. We propose a fine grained randomization based approach that modifies the layout of executable code and hinders code-reuse attack. Our solution, Marlin, randomizes the internal structure of the executable code, thereby denying the attacker the necessary a priori knowledge of instruction addresses for constructing the desired exploit payload. Our approach can be applied to any ELF binary and every execution of this binary uses a different randomization. Our work shows that such an approach is feasible and significantly increases the level of security against code-reuse based attacks. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.