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Global ISR: Toward a Comprehensive Defense Against Unauthorized Code Execution

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Bibliographic Details
Title: Global ISR: Toward a Comprehensive Defense Against Unauthorized Code Execution
Authors: Portokalidis, Georgios, Keromytis, Angelos D
Contributors: COLUMBIA UNIV NEW YORK DEPT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
Source: DTIC
Publication Year: 2010
Collection: Defense Technical Information Center: DTIC Technical Reports database
Subject Terms: Computer Programming and Software, Computer Systems Management and Standards, COMPUTER PROGRAMS, COMPUTER PROGRAMMING, DATA PROCESSING SECURITY, SYMPOSIA, ISR(INSTRUCTION-SET RANDOMIZATION), CODE INJECTION ATTACKS
Description: Instruction-set randomization (ISR) obfuscates the language understood by a system to protect against code-injection attacks by presenting an ever-changing target. ISR was originally motivated by code injection through buffer overflow vulnerabilities. However, Stuxnet demonstrated that attackers can exploit other vectors to place malicious binaries into a victim's filesystem and successfully launch them, bypassing most mechanisms proposed to counter buffer overflows. We propose the holistic adoption of ISR across the software stack, preventing the execution of unauthorized binaries and scripts regardless of their origin. Our approach requires that programs be randomized with di erent keys during a user-controlled installation, effectively combining the benefits of code whitelisting/signing and runtime program integrity. We discuss how an ISR-enabled environment for binaries can be implemented with little overhead in hardware, and show that higher-overhead software-only alternatives are possible. We use Perl and SQL to demonstrate the application of ISR in scripting environments with negligible overhead. ; In Proceedings of the ARO Workshop on Moving Target Defense, p49-76, October 2010, Fairfax, VA. Sponsored in part by AFRL. U.S. Government or Federal Rights License
Document Type: text
File Description: text/html
Language: English
Relation: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA557729
Availability: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA557729
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA557729
Rights: Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
Accession Number: edsbas.A3F2598A
Database: BASE
Description
Abstract:Instruction-set randomization (ISR) obfuscates the language understood by a system to protect against code-injection attacks by presenting an ever-changing target. ISR was originally motivated by code injection through buffer overflow vulnerabilities. However, Stuxnet demonstrated that attackers can exploit other vectors to place malicious binaries into a victim's filesystem and successfully launch them, bypassing most mechanisms proposed to counter buffer overflows. We propose the holistic adoption of ISR across the software stack, preventing the execution of unauthorized binaries and scripts regardless of their origin. Our approach requires that programs be randomized with di erent keys during a user-controlled installation, effectively combining the benefits of code whitelisting/signing and runtime program integrity. We discuss how an ISR-enabled environment for binaries can be implemented with little overhead in hardware, and show that higher-overhead software-only alternatives are possible. We use Perl and SQL to demonstrate the application of ISR in scripting environments with negligible overhead. ; In Proceedings of the ARO Workshop on Moving Target Defense, p49-76, October 2010, Fairfax, VA. Sponsored in part by AFRL. U.S. Government or Federal Rights License