It occurred to me that custom versions of software can be more secure than standard versions because various exploits (like stack smashing, etc.) require precise knowledge of certain sizes and distances in RAM (for instance, the distance from the end of a buffer to the return point...).

Isn't it possible to develop a "randomizing C compiler" that randomly varies these distances every time it compiles a program? No two compiles of the same source code would be exactly the same (but they would execute the same way).

This might involve inserting small random-sized blocks of dead code, or doing returns from subroutines through a level of indirection (i.e., putting the actual return at some random location in the object code with a branch to it).

Done right, this might not degrade performance significantly.

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