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SQ14106

Detected Windows executable files that do not implement the high entropy ASLR vulnerability mitigation protection.

priorityCI/CD statusseverityeffortRL levelRL assessment
passlowlowNonehardening: warning
Reason: mitigation effectiveness issues

About the issue​

High Entropy Address Space Layout Randomization (HEASLR) is a vulnerability mitigation option that forces software components to load on a different memory base address each time they are used. This makes the memory layout unpredictable, and it is therefore harder for malicious code to be reliably injected during application runtime. Memory space that 64-bit applications have at their disposal is significantly larger, but the application needs to opt in to take the advantage.

How to resolve the issue​

  • It's highly recommended to enable this option for all 64-bit software components used at security boundaries, or those that process user controlled inputs. For best results, use HEASLR together with Data Execution Prevention (DEP/NX).
  • To enable this mitigation, refer to your programming language linker documentation.
  • In Microsoft VisualStudio, you can enable HEASLR mitigation by setting the linker option /HIGHENTROPYVA to ON.

Incidence statistics​

ReversingLabs periodically collects and analyzes the contents of popular software package repositories for threat research purposes.

For every repository, the chart shows the percentage of projects that triggered the software assurance policy. In other words, it shows how many projects were found to have the specific issue described on this page.

The percentages are calculated from the total amount of packages analyzed:

  • RubyGems: 174K
  • Nuget: 189K
  • PyPi: 403K
  • NPM: 2.1M