Towards automated integrity protection of C++ virtual function tables in binary programs
Robert Gawlik, Thorsten Holz · 2014
Web browsers are one of the most used, complex, and popular software systems nowadays. They are prone to dangling pointers that result in use-after-free vulnerabilites and this is the de-facto way to exploit them. From a technical point of view, an attacker uses a technique called vtable hijacking to exploit such bugs. More specifically, she crafts bogus virtual tables and lets a freed C++ object point to it in order to gain control over the program at virtual function call sites.