CleanStack – A Dual-Stack for Defending Against Memory Corruption Attacks

Memory corruption vulnerabilities remain a persistent threat to software systems, particularly those built using low-level languages like C/C++. These vulnerabilities can lead to devastating attacks, allowing malicious actors to execute arbitrary code or manipulate critical program data. Traditional protection mechanisms often focus on specific attack types, incur substantial performance penalties, or suffer from compatibility issues. […] The post CleanStack – A Dual-Stack for Defending Against Memory Corruption Attacks appeared first on Cyber Security News.

Mar 24, 2025 - 15:58

CleanStack – A Dual-Stack for Defending Against Memory Corruption Attacks

Memory corruption vulnerabilities remain a persistent threat to software systems, particularly those built using low-level languages like C/C++.

These vulnerabilities can lead to devastating attacks, allowing malicious actors to execute arbitrary code or manipulate critical program data.

Traditional protection mechanisms often focus on specific attack types, incur substantial performance penalties, or suffer from compatibility issues.

A promising new defense mechanism called CleanStack has emerged, offering comprehensive protection against both control-flow hijacking and non-control data attacks.

This novel approach employs a dual-stack architecture that isolates potentially dangerous stack objects from critical program data.

By separating stack variables that may be influenced by external input, CleanStack prevents attackers from exploiting memory vulnerabilities to modify return addresses and hijack program execution.

Security analyst Lei Chong identified that the key advantage of CleanStack lies in its unique approach to tainted stack object separation.

“By isolating stack objects influenced by external input from other safe stack objects, CleanStack prevents attackers from modifying return addresses via controlled stack objects,” noted Chong in his analysis.

Additionally, the system randomizes the placement of tainted objects within what’s called the “Unclean Stack,” making it significantly harder for attackers to predict memory layouts.

The defense mechanism demonstrates remarkable efficiency, with performance evaluations showing only a 1.73% execution overhead on the SPEC CPU2017 benchmark suite while introducing a minimal memory overhead of just 0.04%.

This balance of security and performance makes CleanStack particularly promising for practical deployment in production environments.

Implementation Mechanism

CleanStack’s implementation relies on identifying stack objects that may be influenced by external input.

The system uses heuristic methods to determine which variables might be tainted, looking for characteristics such as arrays, structures containing arrays, and variables whose addresses are taken or passed to functions.

Once identified, these potentially vulnerable objects are relocated to a separate “Unclean Stack.”

// Example of how CleanStack protects a vulnerable function
void vulnerable_function(char *input) {
    char buffer[64];     // Moved to Unclean Stack
    int important_flag;  // Remains on Clean Stack
    strcpy(buffer, input);
    // Even if buffer overflow occurs, important_flag
    // and return address remain protected
}

This segregation ensures that even if an attacker manages to exploit a buffer overflow vulnerability, they cannot reach critical stack data like return addresses or decision-making variables.

The system further enhances security through stack canaries and guard pages, providing comprehensive protection against various memory corruption attacks while maintaining high compatibility with existing codebases.

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