Return to Where? You Can't Exploit What You Can't Find

Explore advanced techniques for detecting and preventing exploitation of memory corruption vulnerabilities in this Black Hat conference talk. Dive into the challenges of countering sophisticated exploitation methods like return-oriented programming (ROP) and the limitations of current control-flow integrity (CFI) defenses. Examine the shortcomings of probabilistic countermeasures based on memory layout randomization and the impact of memory disclosure attacks. Learn about a comprehensive defense called Readactor that utilizes hardware execute-only memory and code pointer hiding to counter both direct code reading and indirect layout disclosure. Discover how this efficient and practical solution can be applied to complex software like the Chromium web browser and protect dynamically generated code from JavaScript JIT compilers. Gain insights into the latest advancements in runtime exploit prevention and understand the ongoing battle between attackers and defenders in the realm of memory security.