Old Dogs And New Tricks: Do You Know Where Your Handles Are?

This paper offers incremental research in the area of untrusted program input via synchronization handle manipulations. Unlike the Michal Zalewski paper on Delivering Signals for Fun and Profit, this paper focuses on the source of the Unix signal handlers. Tested were personal computers running Windows XP and Vista. The synchronization objects were mutexes and events, and the security software included products from AVG, Avast, Avira, BitDefender, BullGuard, CheckPoint, Eset, F-Prot, F-Secure, Kaspersky, McAfee, Microsoft (Security Essentials), Nor- man, Norton, Panda, PC Tools, Quick Heal, Symantec, and Trend Micro.