WPI - Computer Science Department, MS Thesis Presentation, Jake Backer "Bounce Allocator: Mitigating Temporal Memory Safety Errors in the Linux Kernel"

Jake Backer

MS Student

WPI – Computer Science

Thursday, April 20, 2023

Time: 10:30 a.m.  – 11:30 a.m.

Location: Unity Hall 471

Advisor: Prof. Robert Walls

Reader: Prof. Craig Shue                                                                                                                      

Abstract:

Temporal memory safety vulnerabilities can allow attackers to escalate privileges on Linux based devices. This paper presents the Bounce Allocator, a memory allocator designed to mitigate temporal memory safety errors on ARMv8.5 based Linux devices.

Other solutions do not effectively mitigate temporal memory safety errors or have large memory and performance overheads that makes them unsuitable for production environments. The bounce allocator achieves entropy comparable with other solutions while using significantly less memory and having improved runtime performance. The Bounce Allocator is implemented on top of an existing allocator to help preserve kmalloc caching performance.