Whereas user-facing applications are often written in modern languages, the firmware, operating system, support libraries, and virtual machines that underpin just about any modern computer system are still written in low-level languages that value flexibility and performance over convenience and safety. Programming errors in low-level code are often exploitable and can, in the worst case, give adversaries unfettered access to the compromised host system. This book provides an introduction to and overview of automatic software diversity techniques that, in one way or another, use randomization to greatly increase the difficulty of exploiting the vast amounts of low-level code in existence. Diversity-based defenses are motivated by the observation that a single attack will fail against multiple targets with unique attack surfaces. We introduce the many, often complementary, ways that one can diversify attack surfaces and provide an accessible guide to more than two decades worth of research on the topic. We also discuss techniques used in conjunction with diversity to prevent accidental disclosure of randomized program aspects and present an in-depth case study of one of our own diversification solutions.

This book provides an in-depth look at return-oriented programming attacks. It explores several conventional return-oriented programming attacks and analyzes the effectiveness of defense techniques including address space layout randomization (ASLR) and the control-flow restrictions implemented in security watchdogs such as Microsoft EMET. Chapters also explain the principle of control-flow integrity (CFI), highlight the benefits of CFI and discuss its current weaknesses. Several improved and sophisticated return-oriented programming attack techniques such as just-in-time return-oriented programming are presented. Building Secure Defenses against Code-Reuse Attacks is an excellent reference tool for researchers, programmers and professionals working in the security field. It provides advanced-level students studying computer science with a comprehensive overview and clear understanding of important runtime attacks.

Recently, mobile security has garnered considerable interest in both the research community and industry due to the popularity of smartphones. The current smartphone platforms are open systems that allow application development, also for malicious parties. To protect the mobile device, its user, and other mobile ecosystem stakeholders such as network operators, application execution is controlled by a platform security architecture. This book explores how such mobile platform security architectures work. We present a generic model for mobile platform security architectures: the model illustrates commonly used security mechanisms and techniques in mobile devices and allows a systematic comparison of different platforms. We analyze several mobile platforms using the model. In addition, this book explains hardware-security mechanisms typically present in a mobile device. We also discuss enterprise security extensions for mobile platforms and survey recent research in the area of mobile platform security. The objective of this book is to provide a comprehensive overview of the current status of mobile platform security for students, researchers, and practitioners.