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canopic jug [soylentnews.org] writes:

Return-oriented programming (ROP) is now a common technique for compromising systems via a stack-smashing vulnerability. Although restrictions on executing code on the stack have mostly put an end to many simple stack-smashing attacks, that does not mean that they are no longer a threat. There are various schemes in use for defeating ROP attacks. A new mechanism called "RETGUARD" is being implemented in OpenBSD [lwn.net] and is notable for its relative simplicity. It makes use of a simple return-address transformation to disrupt ROP chains to hinder their execution and takes the form of a patch to the LLVM compiler adding a new flag.

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