Inactivating basic blocks of program code to prevent code reuse attacks

and
US Patent
, (Granted)
Abstract. An approach is provided that, after receiving a request to execute a computer program, determines an active set of metadata that corresponds to the requested computer program and then loads basic blocks of the requested computer program into memory. One of the loaded basic blocks is a starting block of the requested computer program. The memory also stores basic blocks corresponding to some previously loaded computer programs. The approach also inactivates basic blocks that are currently stored in the memory, with the inactivated basic blocks being identified based on a comparison of the active set of metadata to the sets of metadata that corresponding to the basic blocks of previously loaded computer programs. After inactivating some basic blocks, the approach executes the starting block of the requested computer program.