Research on Runtime Memory Space Reconstruction Techniques for Source-Unavailable Programs on AArch64
Hui Liu, Guoqing Peng, Peng Liu, Bo Zhao, Jiahao Fan · IEEE Internet of Things Journal · 2025
With the widespread adoption of AArch64 architecture processors in mobile and IoT devices, ensuring the security of applications running on AArch64 systems against memory error vulnerabilities has become a critical research focus in the field of cybersecurity. However, traditional passive defense mechanisms have increasingly shown their limitations, and the growing demand for robust protection has driven continuous advancements in active defense technologies.To address the limitations of current memory protection techniques on AArch64 systems and the need for heterogeneity in heterogeneous redundant execution, we propose BinaryDMR, an efficient, selective, and lightweight runtime memory space reconfiguration tool specifically designed for source-unavailable programs.The core idea behind BinaryDMR is to statically reconstruct the runtime memory layout of source-unavailable programs, such as commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) binaries, using static binary rewriting and library transformation techniques, including the stack, heap, code segments, and shared libraries.We have implemented BinaryDMR and evaluated its performance using a set of binary programs, including 19 kernel utilities (focused on file I/O operations) and one network daemon, Nginx (focused on network I/O operations). Experimental results demonstrate that BinaryDMR significantly reduces the success rate of common memory error-related attacks, effectively mitigates security risks arising from software homogeneity, and delivers strong practicality with minimal performance overhead.