Visible to the public Return-Oriented Programming Gadget Catalog for the Xtensa Architecture

TitleReturn-Oriented Programming Gadget Catalog for the Xtensa Architecture
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2022
AuthorsAmatov, Batyi, Lehniger, Kai, Langendorfer, Peter
Conference Name2022 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops and other Affiliated Events (PerCom Workshops)
Date Publishedmar
Keywordscodes, composability, Computer architecture, Conferences, Esp32, gadget catalog, gadget chaining, human factors, performance evaluation, Pervasive computing, Programming, pubcrawl, Resiliency, return-oriented programming, rop attacks, Scalability, usability, window ABI, Xtensa
AbstractThis paper shows that the modern high customizable Xtensa architecture for embedded devices is exploitable by Return-Oriented Programming (ROP) attacks. We used a simple Hello-World application written with the RIOT OS as an almost minimal code basis for determining if the number of gadgets that can be found in this code base is sufficient to build a reasonably complex attack. We determined 859 found gadgets which are sufficient to create a gadget catalog for the Xtensa. Despite the code basis used being really small, the presented gadget catalog provides Turing completeness, which allows an arbitrary computation of any exploit program.
DOI10.1109/PerComWorkshops53856.2022.9767489
Citation Keyamatov_return-oriented_2022