Classification of Buffer Overflow Vulnerability Monitors

Abstract

Buffer overflow is one of the worst program vulnerabilities. Many preventive approaches are applied to mitigate buffer overflow (BOF) vulnerabilities. However, BOF vulnerabilities are still being discovered in programs on a daily basis which might be exploited to crash programs and execute unwanted code at runtime. Monitoring is a popular approach for detecting BOF attacks during program execution and can prevent the consequences of BOF vulnerability exploitations. However, there is no classification of the proposed approaches to understand their common characteristics, objectives, and limitations. In this paper, we classify the current BOF vulnerability monitoring approaches based on the following five characteristics: monitoring objective, program state utilization, implementation mechanism, environmental change, and attack response. The classification will enable researchers to differentiate among existing monitoring approaches. Moreover, it will provide a guideline to choose monitoring approaches suitable for their needs.