Marlin: A Fine Grained Randomization Approach to Defend against ROP Attacks

Code-reuse attacks, such as return-oriented programming (ROP), bypass defenses against code injection by repurposing existing executable code toward a malicious end. A common feature of these attacks is the reliance on the knowledge of the layout of the executable code. We propose a fine grained randomization based approach that modifies the layout of executable code and hinders code-reuse attack. Our solution, Marlin, randomizes the internal structure of the executable code, thereby denying the attacker the necessary a priori knowledge for constructing the desired sequence of gadget addresses. Our approach can be applied to any ELF binary and every execution of this binary uses a different randomization. Our work shows that such an approach is feasible and significantly increases the level of security against code-reuse based attacks.