JIT Spraying and Mitigations

Abstract: With the discovery of new exploit techniques, novel protection mechanisms are needed as well. Mitigations like DEP (Data Execution Prevention) or ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) created a significantly more difficult environment for exploitation. Attackers, however, have recently researched new exploitation methods which are capable of bypassing the operating system's memory mitigations. One of the newest and most popular exploitation techniques to bypass both of the aforementioned security protections is JIT memory spraying, introduced by Dion Blazakis. In this article we will present a short overview of the JIT spraying technique and also novel mitigation methods against this innovative class of attacks. An anti-JIT spraying library was created as part of our shellcode execution prevention system.