Research And Analysis On Buffer Overflow In The SPARC V8 Architecture

Buffer overflow attack has become the main method of network attack. It floods the buffer by writing an overlength character string containing the address pointing to the attack prcedure into it, which results in overwriting the return address and then excuts the malicious codes, and at last attacks the operating system. SPARC is an computer architecture of RISC, and buffer overflow attack also exists in SPARC v8, which may threaten the operating systems based on the SPARC v8 architecture.Buffer overflow attack occurs in the process of a certain subroutine call, and the register window technique works together with the stack frame in SPARC v8 architecture to control the subroutine call. According to the theory of buffer overflow attack, and considering the characteristic of the register window and stack frame technique in the SPARC v8 subroutine call, a design of buffer overflow attack in SPARC v8 is proposed in this paper. The design is carried out by writing a testing program on LEON2 processor based on the SPARC v8 architecture. It shows the existence of buffer overflow attack in the SPARC v8 architecture and as well as the necessary of seeking a solution of detecting and preventing buffer overflow attacks in the SPARC v8 architectureTo solve the problem, a scheme of detecting and preventing of buffer overflow attacks in the SPARC v8 architecture is proposed in this paper, considering the characristic of the buffer overflow attacks in the SPARC v8 architecture. The scheme is carried out on LEON2 processor. A simulation of the scheme has been completed in ModelSim and a test on FPGA board has been achieved. The correctness and validity of this scheme in detecting and preventing buffer overflow attacks in the SPARC v8 architecture has been verified.