Fine-Grained Modeling of ROP Vulnerability Exploitation Process under Stack Overflow Based on Petri Nets

Abstract

Software vulnerability discovery is currently a hot topic, and buffer overflow remains a prevalent security vulnerability. One of the key issues in vulnerability discovery and analysis is how to quickly analyze buffer overflow vulnerabilities and select critical exploitation paths. Existing modeling methods for vulnerability exploitation cannot accurately reflect the fine-grained execution process of stack overflow exploitation paths. This paper, based on the discussion of buffer overflow exploitation techniques, proposes a fine-grained modeling and analysis method based on Petri nets for the selection and execution of exploitation processes, specifically focusing on the return-oriented programming in stack overflow. Through qualitative analysis, we compared the simulated time of the software with the execution time of existing exploitation tools, achieving timeout-based simulation experiments. We validated the model’s effectiveness using symbolic execution and dynamic analysis techniques. The results indicate that this model performs well for vulnerable programs with Position Independent Executable (PIE) protection enabled and has an advantage in selecting exploitation paths, enabling timeout-based simulation. This method provides a reference for rapidly constructing exploitation implementations.