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Return oriented programming (ROP) attack protection

  • US 9,646,154 B2
  • Filed: 01/20/2015
  • Issued: 05/09/2017
  • Est. Priority Date: 12/12/2014
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A method of protecting against return oriented programming attacks, the method comprising:

  • initiating a compute signature hardware instruction of a computing device to compute a signature for a return address and an associated location on a stack at which the return address is stored, wherein the signature is computed using a one-time pad that is combined with a hash of the return address and the return address position of the return address in the stack, and wherein the one time pad value is stored in at least two separate hardware caches, one cache for use during compute signature as a call cache and one cache for use during verify signature as a return cache;

    enforcing that before executing the return instruction using the return address on the stack, initiating a verify signature hardware instruction of the computing device to verify the signature matches the target return address; and

    responding to successful verification of the signature through execution of the verify signature hardware instruction by the computing device, executing the return instruction to the return address.

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