A buffer overflow detection and defense method based on RISC-V instruction set extension

AbstractBuffer overflow poses a serious threat to the memory security of modern operating systems. It overwrites the contents of other memory areas by breaking through the buffer capacity limit, destroys the system execution environment, and provides implementation space for various system attacks such as program control flow hijacking. That makes it a wide range of harms. A variety of security technologies have been proposed to deal with system security problems including buffer overflow. For example, No eXecute (NX for short) is a memory management technology commonly used in Harvard architecture. It can refuse the execution of code which residing in a specific memory, and can effectively suppress the abnormal impact of buffer overflow on control flow. Therefore, in recent years, it has also been used in the field of system security, deriving a series of solutions based on NX technology, such as ExecShield, DEP, StackGuard, etc. However, these security solutions often rely too much on the processor architecture so that the protection coverage is insufficient and the accuracy is limited. Especially in the emerging system architecture field represented by RISC-V, there is still a l