Re: Unexecutable Stack / Buffer Overflow Exploits...

Dan Hollis (goemon@sasami.anime.net)
Thu, 30 Dec 1999 17:46:45 -0800 (PST)

On Thu, 30 Dec 1999, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
> In any case, I suspect that if something randomly added some random
> value between 0 and 128k to the stack pointer at startup time, it would
> also go a fairly long way towards thwarting overrun attacks --- but make
> no mistake, it's still only papering over the problem.

But is "it wont work 100% of the time" a good enough reason to discard the
idea out of hand entirely? The fact we cant raise the bar infinitely high
means we shouldnt raise it even a little?

If thats the argument being put forth, then we might as well apply the
exact same argument to crypto and discard IDEA PGP RSA etc since none of
those are 100% of the time either (just very very hard).

-Dan

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