Hardware assisted randomization of data

Abstract

Data-oriented attacks are gaining traction thanks to advances in code-centric mitigation techniques for memory corruption vulnerabilities. Previous work on mitigating data-oriented attacks includes Data Space Randomization (DSR). DSR classifies program variables into a set of equivalence classes, and encrypts variables with a key randomly chosen for each equivalence class. This thwarts memory corruption attacks that introduce illegitimate data flows. However, existing implementations of DSR trade precision for better run-time performance, which leaves attackers sufficient leeway to mount attacks. In this paper, we show that high precision and good run-time performance are not mutually exclusive. We present HARD, a precise and efficient hardware-assisted implementation of DSR. HARD distinguishes a larger number of equivalence classes, and incurs lower run-time overhead than software-only DSR. Our implementation achieves run-time overheads of just 6.61% on average, while the software version with the same protection costs 40.96%.