N00B: Bounds Checking for the Masses

Abstract

For decades, spatial memory safety vulnerabilities have plagued systems code. Effective mitigation seemingly demands the impossible: full legacy C/C++ compatibility, easy interoperability with external code, and low overhead, all while invasively transforming the program to bounds-check every memory access. A practical solution remains elusive, despite tremendous efforts by both academia and industry over nearly half a century. This paper identifies key challenges that hinder compilerbased memory safety enforcement and introduces N00B, an efficient cross-platform bounds checker designed to navigate these constraints. N00B’s hybrid approach avoids the limitations of pure pointer- or object-based approaches while combining their strengths in a pragmatic design that prioritizes practical deployability. Evaluation on common compatibility, security, and performance benchmarks shows that N00B achieves promising results, with a geomean runtime overhead of less than 50% on both ARM and x86 architectures, and extensive C/C++ source compatibility. Native support for gradual deployment further lowers barriers to adoption.