Kimchi: a binary rewriting defense against format string attacks

Authors:
Jin Ho You;Seong Chae Seo;Young Dae Kim;Jun Yong Choi;Sang Jun Lee;Byung Ki Kim
Affiliations:
Department of Computer Science, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, Korea;Department of Computer Science, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, Korea;Department of Computer Science, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, Korea;School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea;Department of Internet Information Communication, Shingyeong University, Gyeonggi-do, Korea;Department of Computer Science, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, Korea
Venue:
WISA'05 Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Information Security Applications
Year:
2005

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Abstract

We propose a binary rewriting system called Kimchi that modifies binary programs to protect them from format string attacks in runtime. Kimchi replaces the machine code calling conventional printf with code calling a safer version of printf, safe_printf, that prevents its format string from accessing arguments exceeding the stack frame of the parent function. With the proposed static analysis and binary rewriting method, it can protect binary programs even if they do not use the frame pointer register or link the printf code statically. In addition, it reduces the performance overhead of the patched program by not modifying the calls to printf with the format string argument located in the read-only memory segment, which are not vulnerable to the format string attack.