1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the protection of computer systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method of detecting and blocking Return-to-LIBC attacks.
2. Description of the Related Art
Buffer overflow techniques have been used by malicious hackers and virus writers to attack computer systems. Buffers are data storage areas, which generally hold a predefined amount of finite data. A buffer overflow occurs when a program attempts to store data into the buffer, where the data is larger than the size of the buffer.
One category of buffer overflow, sometimes called stack-based buffer overflow, involves overwriting stack memory, sometimes called the stack. Stack-based buffer overflow is typically caused by programs that do not verify the length of the data being copied into a buffer.
When the data exceeds the size of the buffer, the extra data can overflow into the adjacent memory locations. In this manner, it is possible to corrupt valid data and possibly to change the execution flow and instructions.
In the case of a Return-to-LIBC attack, the attacker overflows the stack in such a way that a return address will be replaced to point to a library function in a loaded library inside the process address space. Thus, when the return address is used by the overflowed process, a library function will be executed. This way the attacker runs at least one application programming interface (API) to run a command shell on the compromised system remotely.