Software Memory Protection

From Dependability

Software Memory Protection

Software Memory Protection is a project funded under the NICECAP program. The goal of SMP (Software Memory Protection) is to prevent and remediate memory overwriting attacks on software binaries.

Scope

The initial project is an 18-month contract, with review and renewal after 12 months. During this 18 months, SMP will be implemented for x86 Linux platform binaries that were compiled from C source. After 12 months, the prevention phase of the project will be complete, except for some remaining optimization of the run time overhead. The final 6 months will focus on the remediation phase.

As stated in the project proposal, memory overwriting attacks are those attacks in which a malicious user provides program input that causes a critical data item to be overwritten by a program statement that, in the absence of malicious input, would not have written to that data item.