The Security Risk of Lacking Compiler Protection in WebAssembly

Quentin Stiévenart, Coen De Roover, Mohammad Ghafari

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference paper

11 Citations (Scopus)
108 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

WebAssembly is increasingly used as the compilation target for cross-platform applications.
In this paper, we investigate whether one can rely on the security measures enforced by existing C compilers when compiling C programs to WebAssembly.
We compiled 4,469 C programs with known buffer overflow vulnerabilities to x86 code and to WebAssembly, and observed the outcome of the execution of the generated code to differ for 1,088 programs.
Through manual inspection, we identified that the root cause for these is the lack of security measures such as stack canaries in the generated
WebAssembly: while x86 code crashes upon a stack-based buffer overflow,
the corresponding WebAssembly continues to be executed.
We conclude that compiling an existing C program to WebAssembly without additional precautions may hamper its security, and we encourage more research in this direction.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2021 21st International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security, QRS 2021
PublisherIEEE
Pages132-139
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)978-1-6654-5813-9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Event21st IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security -
Duration: 6 Dec 202110 Dec 2021
Conference number: 2021
https://qrs21.techconf.org/

Publication series

NameIEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security, QRS
Volume2021-December
ISSN (Print)2693-9177

Conference

Conference21st IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security
Abbreviated titleQRS
Period6/12/2110/12/21
Internet address

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 IEEE.

Copyright:
Copyright 2023 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

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