RetroWrite

RetroWrite

Static instrumentation of binaries for fuzzing and sanitation

RetroWrite can analyze the security of closed source binaries by applying an efficient fuzzing technique that usually only works when the source code is available. This makes it possible to trigger more errors than the default binary fuzzers available, while being much faster in finding these errors.

BinaryFuzzing
Key facts
Maturity
Support
C4DT
Inactive
Lab
Active
  • Technical
  • Research papers

HexHive Group

HexHive Group
Mathias Payer

Prof. Mathias Payer

Our research focuses on software and systems security. Despite efforts and improvements in bug discovery techniques, some exploitable vulnerabilities will remain. We target techniques that both enable developers to discover and remove bugs and make programs resilient against the exploitation of unknown or unpatched vulnerabilities.
  • To discover bugs we propose (i) sanitization techniques that enforce a security property such as memory or type safety; given concrete program input, our sanitizers then flag any property violations (ii) fuzzing techniques that leverage static and dynamic analysis to create program inputs to explore program areas that are not yet covered through existing test cases.
  • To protect against exploitable vulnerabilities, we focus on control-flow integrity using specific language semantics, enforcing type integrity, and protecting selective data. Under this premise, we focus on compiler-based, runtime-based, and language-based protection mechanisms and security policies that increase the resilience of applications against attacks (in the presence of software vulnerabilities).

All prototypes are released as open-source.

This page was last edited on 2024-04-12.