blueness@gentoo.org hardened@gentoo.org Gentoo Hardened Test suite for the PaX kernel patch PaX is a Linux kernel patch which adds much stricter control on how memory is being used by applications. A normal Linux kernel leaves the control to the application and does not implement any enforcement. Especially buffer overflow attacks benefit from the absense of kernel enforced memory control. PaX tries to do its best to enforce this control of memory used by applications, thereby making it harder to succesfully exploit buffer overflows. Furthermore, it adds several randomisations, which also make it harder for buffer overflows to succeed. The test programs test all this functionality, but not all PaX functionality is covered. For more information about PaX, see http://pageexec.virtualave.net/.