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SQ14128

Detected Windows executable files that do not implement delayed import function hijacking mitigation protection.

priorityCI/CD statusseverityeffortRL levelRL assessment
passmediummediumNoneNone

About the issue​

Control Flow Guard (CFG/CFI) protects the code flow integrity by ensuring that indirect calls are made only to vetted functions. This mitigation protects dynamically resolved function targets by instrumenting the code responsible for transferring execution control. Function pointers that get resolved through import and delayed import address tables do not need to be monitored during application runtime. Instead, it is expected that modern programming language toolchains place those pointers in read-only memory locations. However, the delayed import functions are resolved as they are needed during runtime. To ensure the function pointers remain read-only, the operating system must be made aware if it is safe to re-protect the memory pages that hold them. Modern toolchains typically separate import data from other application regions for this very reason.

How to resolve the issue​

  • To enable this mitigation, refer to your programming language toolchain documentation.
  • In Microsoft VisualStudio, you can enable CFG mitigation by passing the /guard:cf parameter to the compiler and linker.

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