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Monday, January 23, 2012

Question: How does loader know ASLR is enabled for a binary?

Most people know that ASLR randomizes the base address of the binary when loaded, but how does the loader know that a binary is ASLR capable? This is a fairly easy question to answer but from what I can tell is rarely documented as a detection method and the subject of this post.

In the PEHeader->IMAGE_OPTIONAL_HEADER there is a flag called DLLCharacteristics that defines many features for the executable on load, 1 of them being ASLR. If you look here IMAGE_OPTIONAL_HEADER structure and scroll down about mid way you will see the values it defines. If you look you will also notice this defines if DEP is enabled as well.

I created a little ruby script to give you access to these values over your whole file system, directories, or a file. There are many tools like cff explorer you can use to view these per a file but this one will give you the ability to crawl a file system to find multiple files with ASLR disabled, DEP disabled and more.

git dllcharacteristics

enjoy

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