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Improving the Security of Time-Bounded Mission-Critical K-Variant Systems by Inserting Unreachable Code

Berk Bekiroglu, Bogdan Korel

K-variant is a multiple variant architecture designed to enhance the security of time-constrained systems, particularly against memory exploitation attacks. In a K-variant system, variants are generated through controlled source code program transformations. Inserting unreachable code is one of the program transformations used to generate new variants in K-variant systems. It is possible to generate functionally equivalent programs by inserting random unreachable code. Because critical instructions in memory are shifted by inserting unreachable code, the survivability of K-variant systems can be improved against memory exploitation attacks. The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of inserting unreachable code in enhancing the security of time-bounded K-variant systems against memory exploitation attacks. The effect of inserting unreachable code on the survivability of time-bounded K-variant systems is investigated experimentally for a variety of memory attacks. The results indicate that increasing the number of variants by inserting unreachable code significantly improves the survivability of time-bounded K-variant systems against memory exploitation attacks. We conclude that introducing unreachable code into time-bounded K-variant systems significantly improves the security of time-bounded K-variant systems against memory exploitation attacks while maintaining a reasonable runtime and memory overhead.