hardening

Exploit-mitigation report

disrobe native hardening reports the exploit mitigations an ELF, PE or Mach-O image requests, and reports each slice of a universal Mach-O separately. Every verdict cites the header field, dynamic tag, load command, debug directory entry or import that decided it. The image is read, never run.

Command

disrobe native hardening <binary>
disrobe native hardening <binary> --json

The text report prints one row per property: the property, its verdict, and the evidence as field = value lines. --json prints the same report as one JSON document with the schema disrobe.native.hardening/v1. The MCP run_command tool reaches the command as ["native", "hardening"] and returns that document.

Verdicts

Verdict	Meaning
present	The image requests the mitigation.
partial	The image requests part of it: RELRO without immediate binding, DYNAMIC_BASE with the relocations stripped, GUARD_CF without an instrumented load configuration.
absent	The image does not request it.
not-applicable	The property does not exist for this image, for example SafeSEH on x86-64 or PIE on a shared library.
undetermined	The structure that decides the property is present but cannot be read, or holds no record of it. The evidence names the structure.

An input that is not an ELF, PE or Mach-O image, or whose headers cannot be read, is refused with a typed error instead of a report:

Code	Refusal
DR-NATIVE-0260	The input is not an ELF, PE or Mach-O image.
DR-NATIVE-0261	The input is a recognized container with no mitigation report: a static library archive, a dyld shared cache, or an MS-DOS executable without a PE header.
DR-NATIVE-0262	A header, program header table, PE section table, dynamic table or load command cannot be read or exceeds its bound.
DR-NATIVE-0263	The file is an object file, core dump or debug-symbol companion, not a linked image.
DR-NATIVE-0264	A universal Mach-O declares more than 64 slices.
DR-NATIVE-0265	The input file cannot be read.

ELF

Property	Decided by
nx	PT_GNU_STACK.p_flags: present without PF_X. A missing PT_GNU_STACK is absent.
pie	e_type: ET_EXEC is absent; ET_DYN with PT_INTERP, or with DF_1_PIE in DT_FLAGS_1 for a static PIE, is present; any other ET_DYN is a shared object and not-applicable.
relro	PT_GNU_RELRO with DT_BIND_NOW, DF_BIND_NOW or DF_1_NOW is present (full RELRO); PT_GNU_RELRO alone is partial; no PT_GNU_RELRO is absent.
stack-canary	An undefined dynamic symbol __stack_chk_fail, __stack_chk_guard or __intel_security_cookie. A static image is read from .symtab; a stripped static image is undetermined.
fortify	Imported glibc __*_chk entry points. fortify.fortified counts them, fortify.fortifiable adds the imported plain functions that have a _chk variant. A static image is undetermined.
rpath, runpath	DT_RPATH and DT_RUNPATH, with the search path as evidence.
ibt, shstk	GNU_PROPERTY_X86_FEATURE_1_AND in the NT_GNU_PROPERTY_TYPE_0 note, x86 and x86-64 only.
bti, pac	GNU_PROPERTY_AARCH64_FEATURE_1_AND, AArch64 only.
symbols	An SHT_SYMTAB section with at least one symbol; a missing one means the image is stripped.

PE

Property	Decided by
dynamic-base	DllCharacteristics.DYNAMIC_BASE; partial when IMAGE_FILE_RELOCS_STRIPPED is also set.
high-entropy-va	DllCharacteristics.HIGH_ENTROPY_VA; not-applicable for PE32.
nx-compat, force-integrity, no-seh, appcontainer	The DllCharacteristics flag of the same name.
safe-seh	x86 only: a nonzero SEHandlerTable in the load configuration. not-applicable when NO_SEH is set, because the image registers no handler.
gs	A nonzero SecurityCookie in the load configuration.
cfg	DllCharacteristics.GUARD_CF together with IMAGE_GUARD_CF_INSTRUMENTED in GuardFlags; the evidence adds GuardCFFunctionCount.
xfg	IMAGE_GUARD_XFG_ENABLED in GuardFlags with a nonzero GuardXFGCheckFunctionPointer.
cet-shadow-stack	CET_COMPAT in the IMAGE_DEBUG_TYPE_EX_DLLCHARACTERISTICS debug directory entry, x86 and x86-64 only.
authenticode	A WIN_CERTIFICATE in the security directory. The report states presence; it does not verify the signature.

The load configuration is read up to its own Size field, so a field the image's load configuration does not reach counts as missing and the evidence says so.

Mach-O

Property	Decided by
pie	MH_PIE in mach_header.flags; not-applicable for libraries and bundles.
nx-heap	MH_NO_HEAP_EXECUTION.
nx-stack	present unless MH_ALLOW_STACK_EXECUTION is set.
stack-canary	An undefined ___stack_chk_fail or ___stack_chk_guard.
arc	An ARC-only runtime import such as _objc_retainAutoreleasedReturnValue or _objc_storeStrong; absent when the image imports the Objective-C runtime without one, not-applicable when it imports none.
code-signature	LC_CODE_SIGNATURE.
hardened-runtime	CS_RUNTIME in the flags of the signature's CodeDirectory. The signature itself is not verified.
encrypted	A nonzero cryptid in LC_ENCRYPTION_INFO or LC_ENCRYPTION_INFO_64.
restrict	A __RESTRICT segment holding a __restrict section.

JSON shape

{
  "schema": "disrobe.native.hardening/v1",
  "images": [
    {
      "format": "elf",
      "machine": "x86-64",
      "bits": 64,
      "kind": "executable",
      "checks": [
        {
          "property": "runpath",
          "status": "present",
          "evidence": [{ "field": "DT_RUNPATH", "value": "/opt/hardening/lib" }]
        }
      ],
      "fortify": {
        "fortified": 0,
        "fortifiable": 3,
        "fortified_functions": [],
        "unfortified_functions": ["memcpy", "printf", "strcpy"]
      }
    }
  ]
}

format is elf, pe or macho. kind is executable or shared-library. slice_offset appears on each slice of a universal Mach-O. fortify appears on dynamically linked ELF images.

The library entry point is disrobe_pass_native::hardening::analyze. It returns a HardeningReport or a HardeningError carrying the same codes, and ImageHardening::check(Property::StackCanary) returns one verdict with its evidence.

Grading

The matrix in corpus/native/hardening holds images built from repository C and Objective-C sources, each with one set of hardening flags: clang 19.1.7 with ld.lld for ELF x86-64 and AArch64, MSVC 19.44 and clang-cl 19.1.7 with lld-link for PE x86 and x86-64, and clang 19.1.7 with ld64.lld for Mach-O x86-64 and arm64. The Mach-O hardened-runtime flag comes from rcodesign 0.29.0. Two Mach-O images carry a documented patch: one sets the stack and heap execution header flags, which ld64.lld cannot set, and one sets cryptid to 1 before signing, which only an encrypting store writes. MANIFEST.toml records each source, toolchain, command and SHA-256.

The expected verdict of every property is what the build command asked for. The build script refuses to write the manifest unless llvm-readobj, llvm-objdump, llvm-nm and rcodesign report the same verdict from the bytes. checksec_cross.py also compares the ELF verdicts with pwntools 4.14.1 ELF.checksec; the only difference is the stub shared object's canary, because pwntools counts a definition of __stack_chk_fail and this report counts imports. Two images from the Authenticode corpus grade the signature check. The test compares every expected verdict and every cited value the reference readers report, such as the security cookie address, GuardFlags, SEHandlerCount, the search paths and cryptid. Every property has a present and an absent image. Flipping any one expectation turns the grade red, and setting PF_X on one PT_GNU_STACK changes exactly the nx verdict.

Limits

• FORTIFY counts the glibc _chk entry points; musl has none, and Bionic-only names such as __strlen_chk are not counted.
• nx-heap reports the MH_NO_HEAP_EXECUTION header flag, not the heap policy of the running system.
• ARC detection reads imports; an ARC image whose code never calls an ARC-only entry point reads as absent.