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Application & OT Security · Advanced

Control-Flow Integrity (CFI)

A mitigation that restricts indirect calls and jumps to valid targets determined at compile time, blocking control-flow hijacking.

Definition

CFI implementations include Microsoft Control Flow Guard (CFG), Clang CFI and hardware features like Intel CET indirect branch tracking. They make code-reuse attacks such as ROP and JOP much harder.

Example

Enabling Control Flow Guard with /guard:cf on a Windows build.

Exam tip

CFI protects forward edges (calls/jumps); shadow stacks protect backward edges (returns).

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