> The unique pattern of machine-code that must occur in any implementation of JIT, is a jump to a memory address that was computed entirely at runtime, i.e. wit

> The unique pattern of machine-code that must occur in any implementation of JIT, is a jump to a memory address that was computed entirely at runtime, i.e. with a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use-define_chain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use-define_chain for that address value that leads back to a call to mmap(2) or malloc(2). This is probably mostly true. But actually reliably finding such cases, in the most hostile environment imaginable (namely, on x86-64 binary code), would require heroic program analysis that I as a compiler engineer would judge unrealistic. I would find it much more plausible for the system to watch for something like "jump to a target in a memory page that at some point had the W flag set, has since had W removed and X set, and has not been jumped to since that", and then trigger a compilation of that page starting at the given jump address, and a rewrite of the jump instruction. As proposed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23614894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23614894 this could be done by watching for page faults, though presumably it would mean intercepting places where the application tries to set the X bit on a page and setting NX instead so that the page fault can be caught.