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Difficulty: MediumMitigation Strategies and Enterprise Hardening Practices

A security engineer is establishing host-hardening baselines for web servers to mitigate memory corruption and buffer overflow exploits. The engineer must configure controls that randomize memory locations assigned to system processes and mark stack memory regions as non-executable. Which of the following technical mitigations best satisfies these security requirements?

  1. Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) and Data Execution Prevention (DEP)Answer
  2. B
    Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) in permissive mode and chroot jailing
  3. C
    Host-based Intrusion Detection System (HIDS) and application allowlisting
  4. D
    Network Segmentation and Transport Layer Security (TLS) mutual authentication

Answer

Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) and Data Execution Prevention (DEP)
The correct answer provides the exact combination of host-hardening memory protections needed. Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) randomizes the memory locations of key data areas (such as base executable, stack, and heap), making it difficult for an attacker to reliably jump to target memory locations. Data Execution Prevention (DEP), also known as Exec Shield or the NX (No-Execute) bit, prevents code execution from non-executable memory regions such as the stack and heap.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the scenario requirements
Identified two specific memory protection requirements: address randomization and non-executable stack enforcement.
Hardening against buffer overflow exploits requires technical controls operating at the OS memory management level.
2
Map requirements to technical security controls
ASLR addresses memory position randomization; DEP (No-Execute / NX bit) prevents binary execution from memory pages designated for data storage.
Combining ASLR and DEP provides comprehensive mitigation against buffer overflows and return-oriented programming (ROP) exploits.

Key Concept

Host Hardening and Exploit Mitigations (ASLR & DEP)
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Topics

Mitigation Strategies and Enterprise Hardening Practices

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