SQ14147
Detected Windows executable files with the entry point residing in a writable section making it possible to change code while executing.
| priority | CI/CD status | severity | effort | RL level | RL assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | fail | high | medium | 5 | hardening: fail Reason: critical code linking issues |
About the issue
Windows executable files are mapped in memory as a sequence of allocated pages. The pages are grouped into sections with defined access rights. Main executable code section is referenced by the entry point address. When the entry point section requests a combination of write and execute access rights attributes, it gets allowed to self-modify its code during runtime. Vulnerability mitigations are implemented with the assumption that the executable code sections are read-only, or immutable. Using unsafe executable section access rights may lead to exposing critical security data to overwrites, tampering, and complete bypasses of vulnerability mitigations. This issue is typically reported when a software publisher uses a low quality executable packing solution.
How to resolve the issue
- You should deprecate the use of runtime packers, or enforce digital rights management via less intrusive ways that preserve compatibility with vulnerability mitigation options.
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
Recommended reading
- Access Rights (External resource - SOFFRONT)
- Entry point (External resource - Wikipedia)