A synergistic security method for control-flow hijacking detection using SPNs

Abstract

In this paper we present a security methodology which can efficiently and deterministically detect a control-flow hijacking attack against real-world vulnerable applications and visually illustrate its functionality by using Stochastic Petri Nets (SPNs). We then discuss two possible implementation scenarios of this methodology, one that requires no hardware or OS modification and one that utilizes a special hardware component but is able to deliver no runtime performance degradation. Finally, we quantifiably show that, even in the worst possible scenario, the proposed security technique can be applied in real-world, real-time security systems with no significant performance overhead.