[11881] in bugtraq
Re: fixing all buffer overflows --- random magin numbers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (nm)
Tue Sep 14 01:07:32 1999
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Message-Id: <3.0.32.19990912204341.00af2660@mail.vt.edu>
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 20:43:42 -0400
Reply-To: nm <nmanisca@VT.EDU>
From: nm <nmanisca@VT.EDU>
X-To: "Dr. Joel M. Hoffman" <joel@EXC.COM>, BUGTRAQ@SECURITYFOCUS.COM
To: BUGTRAQ@SECURITYFOCUS.COM
Neat idea.
But, couldn't someone just take a common binary (say ls) that exists
on the target system and reverse engineer it and begin to make a mapping
of numbers to syscalls.
Nick Maniscalco
At 09:37 PM 9/11/99 -0400, Dr. Joel M. Hoffman wrote:
>I was thinking --- it wouldn't be too hard to make buffer overflow
>attacks impossible. The basic idea is to do away with binary
>compatibility.
>
>In particular, I was thinking that part of building a kernel would
>involve assigning a random number to each syscall, and creating a
>syscall.h file with these random numbers. A binary would only run if
>it was compiled with the proper syscall.h, so all binaries would have
>to be recompiled for the new kernel, but then, syscall.h could be
>removed, and the system would be impervious to buffer overflow
>attacks. (One step further would involve random magic numbers in
>every function call.)
>
>I would be happy to give up binary compatilibyt for the added security
>it would add.
>
>Comments?
>
>-Joel Hoffman
>(joel@exc.com)
>
