Scargos: Towards automatic vulnerability distribution

Recent work has suggested automated approaches to vulnerability distribution, but their usage has been limited to local networks and memory corruption detection techniques and has precluded custom vulnerability response processes. We present Scargos, a novel approach to automate the distribution and verification of vulnerabilities across the internet, while allowing for automatic, custom countermeasures without the need to trust a central authority. By leveraging collaborative detection, vulnerability reports can be contributed by anybody and are announced to an open network by using packet-based self-certifying alerts (SCA), which are a proof of the existence of a vulnerability by capturing the original, unmodified attack. We show that our approach allows for detection of previously unknown attacks, while an entire life cycle including distribution and verification is achieved on average in under 2 seconds.