Render unto the Heap that which is the Voodoos

Presented at Summercon 2015, July 18, 2015, 11 a.m. (50 minutes).

Over the past 15 years, security researchers have created specific heap exploitation techniques targeting well identified allocators and developed tools to inspect, visualize, force and sometimes predict layout of dynamically allocated memory regions. Nonetheless, the diversity of Heap Allocators makes it hard for exploit writers to come up with generic heap prediction techniques. Among the various most used allocators are DLmalloc, PTmalloc, JEmalloc, the Windows Heap, as well as several flavors of Garbage collected memory allocators in web browsers. Internals of these allocators differ so vastly that coming up with generic tools to predict the dynamic behavior of these different implementations is currently out of reach. This talk aims at surveying the existing work in the field of heap analysis and attempt to introduce a systematic methodology to analyze dynamic behavior of allocators for the exploit writer.


Presenters:

  • Julien Vanegue
    Julien Vanegue is a computer security researcher from New York who spends a lot of time reading Phrack articles when he is not writing them. Julien previously presented at Summercon in 2012 and 2014 on Modern static analysis using SMT solvers and the Automated Exploitation Grand Challenge.

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