Kris Watts
MS Research Presentation

"Harvard Architecture Buffer Overflows : Exploiting Stack Based Buffer Overflows for Code Injection Attacks."

Major Professor: Paul Oman

Thursday, May 14, 2009, 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm , GJ (Gauss-Johnson) 218

Buffer overflow exploits are pervasive and well understood in IT infrastructure but little research has been done on how an embedded device based on the Harvard architecture may be exploited. We show that the techniques used by attckers to exploit IT operating systems that feature nonexecutable stacks translate well to Harvard architecture devices. Using a modified "return-to-libc" attack we will show that an attacker can execute routines within an embedded microcontroller based on the Intel 8051 and the Keil C51 compiler. We then extend the approach to show how an attacker can use update routines, which are commonly found in many embedded devices, to inject data into the program space of the Harvard architecture and add functionality to the device.