Good code can do malicious things

Good code can do malicious things

Author ColGlobe

Two students from UC San Diego have determined that malicious programs can be built into seemingly good code through the use of return-oriented programming. They have shown that risk applied to both the x86 architecture found in most personal computers, but also to RISC computer architecture as well.

While it was shown last year that the x86 architecture was vulnerable, the tests concluded that a great deal of manual coding was required to force good to become malicious through return oriented programming. Now it is obvious that such problems may be inherent to most types of computing system.

The problem is that a programmer can introduce good into a programming that forces it, in a seemingly beign way, to spawn malicious programs.  By automating the process, it can be set to perform the task through any number of program influenced variables, making it completely invisible before the spawning is begun, and by then the malicious code has already become active.