BuBBle: A Javascript Engine Level Countermeasure against Heap-Spraying Attacks

Web browsers that support a safe language such as Javascript are becoming a platform of great interest for security attacks. One such attack is a heap-spraying attack: a new kind of attack that combines the notoriously hard to reliably exploit heap-based buffer overflow with the use of an in-browser scripting language for improved reliability. A typical heap-spraying attack allocates a high number of objects containing the attacker’s code on the heap, dramatically increasing the probability that the contents of one of these objects is executed. In this paper we present a lightweight approach that makes heap-spraying attacks in Javascript significantly harder. Our prototype, which is implemented in Firefox, has a negligible performance and memory overhead while effectively protecting against heap-spraying attacks.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: ESSOS
• Authors: Francesco Gadaleta, Yves Younan, Wouter Joosen
• Keywords: ESSOS 2010, Heap-based Buffer Overflow, Heap-spraying Attacks, Software Engineering, Typical Heap-spraying Attack