Integrated Circuits and Systems >

2025 , Vol. 2 >Issue 3: 167 - 173

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23919/ICS.2025.3583689

Regular Papers

Backward-Edge Control Flow Integrity Based on Return Address Encryption

  • FENGSHUO TIAN ,
  • KAIXUAN WANG ,
  • JUN HAN
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  • State Key Laboratory of Integrated Chips and Systems, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
JUN HAN (e-mail: ).

JUN HAN (Member, IEEE)

Received date: 2025-01-31

  Revised date: 2025-04-27

  Accepted date: 2025-06-19

  Online published: 2025-10-22

Supported by

National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant(61934002)

National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant(62234008)

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Abstract

Control flow integrity (CFI) plays an important role in defending against code reuse attacks (CRA). It protects the program’s control flow from being hijacked by restricting control flow transfers during execution. Specifically, backward-edge CFI safeguards return addresses to mitigate Return-Oriented Programming (ROP) attacks. In this work, we implement a backward-edge CFI mechanism that employs the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for cryptographic protection of return addresses. We utilize the gem5 simulator for architectural modeling and evaluation. Additionally, we design a dedicated AES hardware accelerator and integrate it into the system through gem5+RTL co-simulation. The AES accelerator is synthesized under TSMC 28 nm technology, which can work at 1GHz, with an area of 10045 μm2 and a power consumption of 1.31 mW. Experimental results indicate that the performance overhead of the backward-edge CFI scheme is less than 0.1%.

Key words： Advanced encryption standard (AES); control-flow integrity (CFI); return-oriented programming (ROP)

Cite this article

FENGSHUO TIAN , KAIXUAN WANG , JUN HAN . Backward-Edge Control Flow Integrity Based on Return Address Encryption[J]. Integrated Circuits and Systems, 2025 , 2(3) : 167 -173 . DOI: 10.23919/ICS.2025.3583689

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