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SQ14115

Detected Windows executable files that try to implement buffer overrun vulnerability mitigation without the appropriate security cookie.

priorityCI/CD statusseverityeffortSAFE levelSAFE assessment
passhighmediumNonehardening: warning
Reason: ineffective mitigations detected

About the issue​

Buffer overrun protection (Stack Guard) is a vulnerability mitigation option that prevents stack-based memory corruptions. Special values, called stack cookies, are inserted in the stack immediately before the return address value. Code flow protection is achieved by monitoring for unexpected stack cookie value changes. The application does try to implement buffer overrun protection, but the stack cookie it depends on is absent from the headers.

How to resolve the issue​

  • Review the programming language linker options, or consider using a different executable packing solution.
  • In Microsoft VisualStudio, you can enable buffer overrun protection mitigation by setting the linker option /GS to ON.

Incidence statistics​

ReversingLabs periodically collects and analyzes the contents of popular software package repositories for threat research purposes. Analysis results are used to calculate incidence statistics for issues (policy violations) that Spectra Assure can detect in software packages.

This section is updated when new data becomes available.

Total amount of packages analyzed

  • RubyGems: 183K
  • Nuget: 644K
  • PyPi: 628K
  • NPM: 3.72M

Total detections per repository

For every repository, the chart shows the number of packages that triggered the software assurance policy. In other words, it shows how many packages in each package repository were found to have the specific issue described on this page. This information helps you understand how common the issue is across different software communities.

If a repository is absent from the chart, that means none of the packages in that repository triggered this policy during analysis, or the policy was not used during analysis.

Distribution of total detections by project popularity

For every repository, the chart shows how many of the total detections belong to the Top 100 (1-100), Top 1000 (101-1000) and Top 10 000 (1001-10 000) most downloaded projects. This information helps you understand the impact of the issue within each community, making it clearer when the issue affects the most popular projects.

If the chart shows zero values for all of the top project groups, that means all detections were in unranked projects (lower than 10 000 on the list of most downloaded projects).