Re: [PEN-TEST] Crusoe chip.

[Craig Anderson <craig () XTIME COM>]

On Mon, 6 Nov 2000, Ben Ford wrote:

> I just had an interesting conversation that sparked an idea.  One of the
> major problems we have regarding security is the fact that the stack on
> the x86 architecture is executable.  Because of that, when we have a
> buffer overflow, arbitrary code can be executed.
>
> My question is this:  Because the x86 architecture is only software
> emulated on the Crusoe chip, could that chip (or the software layer
> emulating the x86) detect when a buffer overflow was happening and head
> off any code execution, thereby eliminating the root exploit?


<--( SNIP )-->

 Helu,

  Let us not forget that most Heap/BSS are executable as well. It has
also been shown ( Tim Newsham, Crispin Cowan, etc.. Bugtraq archive ) that
you can utilize the Heap/BSS to bypass stack overflow protection/detection
( i.e. StackGuard ).

  Anyone know of anyone doing work on this?    Heap/BSS overflows are
abound, and nothing I know of has been set forth to eliminate them since
most of the overflows being written for the public eye are stack-based..
but again I could be completely wrong.

  Anyone?


-- Craig