One of the best MSc dissertations I’ve read:

“We present a novel algorithm that integrates data-flow analysis and a decision procedure with the aim of automatically building exploits. The exploits we generate are constructed to hijack the control flow of an application and redirect it to malicious code.

Our algorithm is designed to build exploits for three common classes of security vulnerability; stack-based buffer overflows that corrupt a stored instruction pointer, buffer overflows that corrupt a function pointer, and buffer overflows that corrupt the destination address used by instructions that write to memory. For these vulnerability classes we present a system capable of generating functional exploits in the presence of complex arithmetic modification of inputs and arbitrary constraints. Exploits are generated using dynamic data-flow analysis in combination with a decision procedure.”

(yes, I am now Schneier-blogging)