Address Space Layout Randomization - Benefits

Benefits

Address space randomization hinders some types of security attacks by making it more difficult for an attacker to predict target addresses. For example, attackers trying to execute return-to-libc attacks must locate the code to be executed, while other attackers trying to execute shellcode injected on the stack have to find the stack first. In both cases, the related memory addresses are obscured from the attackers. These values have to be guessed, and a mistaken guess is not usually recoverable due to the application crashing.

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