Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is a security feature included in modern operating systems. It is known to be available in Linux, Mac OS X, iOS, Microsoft Windows and Android operating systems and is intended to prevent an application or service from executing code from a non-executable memory region. This helps prevent certain exploits that store code via a buffer overflow, for example. DEP runs in two modes: hardware-enforced DEP for CPUs that can mark memory pages as nonexecutable, and software-enforced DEP with limited protection for CPUs that do not have hardware support. Software-enforced DEP does not protect against execution of code in data pages, but instead counters SEH overwrite, another type of attack.
DEP was introduced on Linux in 2004 (kernel 2.6.8), on Windows in 2004 with Windows XP Service Pack 2, while Apple introduced DEP when they moved to x86 in 2006.
Famous quotes containing the words data, execution and/or prevention:
“To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it—all my life.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The application requisite to the duties of the office I hold [governor of Virginia] is so excessive, and the execution of them after all so imperfect, that I have determined to retire from it at the close of the present campaign.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“... if this world were anything near what it should be there would be no more need of a Book Week than there would be a of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)