Our products > Cybersecurity ​> Return oriented programming (ROP) Protector 

Return oriented programming (ROP) Protector

A radical defense solution that protects legacy software systems from ROP cyberattacks

ROP Protector is a radical defense solution that protects legacy systems from ROP cyberattacks. The cybersecurity playing field is fundamentally asymmetric. Attackers can easily identify weaknesses in a target system as soon as they have access to its code and configuration. As a result, defenders are perpetually playing a game of catch-up after an attack has occurred to secure their systems. 
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The ROP attack technique effectively uses code already present within the target system to carry out the attack. ROP attackers harness software components within the legacy system, commonly referred to as gadgets, to carry out the attack. Once devised, ROP attacks are easy to carry out since they rely on the target system being static. ROP Protector is an efficient and practical solution to the ROP defense needs of legacy systems. 
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How it works

​ROP cyberattacks are easy to accomplish because target systems are essentially static. ROP Protector is a moving target defense solution which ensures that the target system itself is dynamic—preventing attacks that aim to leverage static gadgets within the system. ROP Protector creates a morphed version of the target system that has exactly the same set of capabilities as the original yet does not have the gadgets that the ROP attack depends on. 

ROP Protector is a pure binary-to-binary code scrambling solution. It does not require access to the source code for the protected system. It ensures that gadgets needed to facilitate a typical ROP attack are not available for use by an attacker. Importantly, studies have shown that well-known applications (e.g., the Apache webserver) transformed by ROP Protector have comparable performance to their original versions.  

ROP Protector is particularly valuable in the case of legacy systems for which source code is unavailable since it is a pure binary-to-binary code scrambling solution. Studies have shown that neither the capabilities nor the performance of well-known applications (e.g. the Apache webserver) are impacted after being scrambled by ROP Protector. Thus, ROP Protector is an efficient and practical capability for the ROP defense needs of legacy systems. 
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Features

  • Binary-to-binary code scrambling: protects software without the need of source code. This is extremely valuable for legacy and proprietary software systems where source may not be available 
  • Robust defense: defends against return-oriented programming attacks not just by scrambling the software, but also by creating multiple unique variants of software. By switching out these variants on each invocation, an attacker is unable to get a foothold—attackers require multiple gadgets to execute an attack; hence, even if they are able to find one gadget in a variant, that gadget will have moved or not be present in another variant 
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Advantages

  • A vulnerable system is protected against ROP attacks without new development effort 
  • Protection is achieved without exposing underlying intellectual property in source code 
  • System performance is not impacted 
  • Protection is built into the target system—no new components are added 
  • Defends by preventing the attack instead of acting in response to it 
  • Operation is transparent to end users 
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Resources

Research and products of interest

Research

  • Cybersecurity research: innovations to protect mission-critical networks, services, systems and infrastructure 

Products

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