Code reuse attacks (CRAs) are recent security exploits that allow attackers to execute arbitrary code on a compromised machine. CRAs, exemplified by return-oriented and jump-oriented programming approaches, reuse fragments of the library code, thus avoiding the need for explicit injection of attack code on the stack. Since the executed code is reused existing code, CRAs bypass current hardware and software security measures that prevent execution from data or stack regions of memory. While softwarebased full control flow integrity (CFI) checking can protect against CRAs, it includes significant overhead, involves non-trivial effort of constructing a control flow graph, relies on proprietary tools and has potential vulnerabilities due to the presence of unintended branch instructions in architectures such as x86-those branches are not checked by the software CFI. We propose branch regulation (BR), a lightweight hardware-supported protection mechanism against the CRAs that addresses all limitations of software CFI. BR enforces simple control flow rules in hardware at the function granularity to disallow arbitrary control flow transfers from one function into the middle of another function. This prevents common classes of CRAs without the complexity and run-time overhead of full CFI enforcement. BR incurs a slowdown of about 2% and increases the code footprint by less than 1% on the average for the SPEC 2006 benchmarks.

Introduction: Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most prevalent form of non-melanoma skin cancer commonly arising in elderly patients. Currently, many laser systems are applied for the treatment of BCC. However, up to the present, there have been several reports concerning ocular side effects due to the laser procedure in the borders of the periorbital area. This determines the feasibility of testing new laser surgical modes for the management of periorbital BCC. This stuay aimed to estimate both the efficacy, the early post-radiated side effects and long-term outcomes of the CVL treatment of periorbital BCC. Patients and Methods: Two men and 6 women aged 50 to 77 years were diagnosed with periorbital BCC according to the data of both the clinical evaluation and histological examination of the tissue samples taken from the involved area. Six months after the laser treatment, the histological examination of skin samples from the borderline of the irradiated area was made again. All patients were followed for 24 months after the laser treatment of BCC. The laser treatment was administered during one session of copper vapor laser (CVL) (Yakhroma-Med model). The treatment included CVL radiation with a wavelength of 511 nm and 578 nm, in the ratio of 3:2. The power level was set up to 3 W, and the exposure time was equal from 200 to 600 ms. The pulse duration accounted for 15 ns. The diameter of the light spot on the skin surface amounted to 1 mm. Results: Dual-wavelengths CVL treatment of periorbital BCC provided a complete elimination of malignant cells and dysplastic vessels during one procedure. The duration of skin healing amounted to 2-4 weeks. There were neither ocular injuries or pronounced skin side effects nor relapses within 24 months after the laser procedure. Conclusion: CVL treatment of periorbital BCC provides relevant cosmetic results without ocular injuries and relapses.

Today's superscalar microprocessors use large, heavily-ported physical register files (RFs) to increase the instruction throughput. The high complexity and power dissipation of such RFs mainly stem from the need to maintain each and every result for a large number of cycles after the result generation. We observed that a significant fraction (about 45%) of the result values are delivered to their consumers via the bypass network (consumed "on-the-fly") and are never read out from the destination registers. In this paper, we first formulate conditions for identifying such transient values and describe their micro-architectural implementation; then we propose a technique to avoid the writeback of such transient values into the RF. With 64-entry integer and floating point register files, our technique achieves an 11% performance improvement and 29% reduction in the RF energy consumption compared to the baseline machine with the same number of registers. Furthermore, for the same performance target, the Selective Writeback scheme results in a 38% reduction in the energy consumption of the RF compared to the baseline machine.

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Investigation of the processes of copper ions transition into a solution from oxide and sulfide compounds under the influence of organic complexing agents The article describes the results of studying of the process of copper leaching from model grounds containing 0.02 % of copper oxide or copper sulfide, with solutions of natural and chemically modified complexing agents. The total amount of one ground sample was 500 g. The model grounds were placed in columns, and the solutions of complexing agents were passed through the columns at a given rate. Sodium humate, sulfonated and oxidized humic acid, native and oxidized fulvic acid, and sodium lactate were studied as leaching agents. It is shown that solutions of all reagents with a concentration of 0.01 % can produce a transition of copper into the solution from both the oxide and sulfide mixtures. It was established that oxidized and native fulvic acids and sodium lactate are most effective for copper extracting. For oxide copper minerals, the most effective complexing agent is the lactate ion, and an oxidized derivative of fulvic acid has a little lower efficiency. Further, less effective agents are the sulfonated humic derivative and the native fulvic acid which have approximately equal effectiveness. The sodium humate is less active and the oxidized humic derivative has lower efficiency. In the case of sulfide minerals, the most effective complexing agent is the oxidized derivative of fulvic acid. The lactate ion, the sulfonated humic derivative and the native fulvic acid are a little less effective agents. The sodium humate and the oxidized humic derivative have comparatively low efficiency. By the mathematical processing of kinetic data, the rate constants of copper leaching processes from model grounds were estimated. The values of the found constants are in the range from 1.05•10-7 to 1.28•10-7 s-1. The kinetic curves for the transferring of copper ions to the solution under the action of complexing agents are characterized by a relatively small transition period and fast reaching concentrations which are close to equilibrium ones.