Abstract
ASLR (address space layout randomization) and ROP (return oriented programming) attacks have been happening for years on the PC platform. Android devices are ripe for these same attacks. Android has made mitigation efforts, mostly in the Zygote (mother of all Java processes), which is presently exposed to a vast number of ASLR bypassing exploits. We carefully re-analyzed the Zygote process creation model. We include mitigations not only for ASLR but also for ROP attacks. We demonstrate that Android becomes robust against most of the ROP exploits by running such attacks on the device, in the presence of our solution. We compare our solution with existing solutions and show that ours is a more effective approach to mitigate ASLR and ROP attacks on ARM based Android devices. Our changes do not interfere with the normal functioning of the Android device and can be easily incorporated as a secure replacement for the existing Zygote that is presently exposed to a vast number of ASLR bypassing vulnerabilities.
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Parikh, V., Mateti, P. (2017). ASLR and ROP Attack Mitigations for ARM-Based Android Devices. In: Thampi, S., MartÃnez Pérez, G., Westphall, C., Hu, J., Fan, C., Gómez Mármol, F. (eds) Security in Computing and Communications. SSCC 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 746. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6898-0_29
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6898-0_29
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