Computer Sciences Dept.

Computer Security and Cryptography Reading Group
February 2005 List

Date &
Location
Reading
Thursday, February 10, 2005
2 PM - 3 PM
7331 CS

Tal Garfinkel

Mendel Rosenblum

Dan Boneh
Tal Garfinkel, Ben Pfaff, Jim Chow, Mendel Rosenblum, Dan Boneh
Stanford
Terra: A Virtual Machine-Based Platform for Trusted Computing
SOSP'03

URL: http://www.stanford.edu/~talg/papers/SOSP03/abstract.html

We present a flexible architecture for trusted computing, called Terra, that allows applications with a wide range of security requirements to run simultaneously on commodity hardware. Applications on Terra enjoy the semantics of running on a separate, dedicated, tamper-resistant hardware platform, while retaining the ability to run side-by-side with normal applications on a general-purpose computing platform. Terra achieves this synthesis by use of a trusted virtual machine monitor (TVMM) that partitions a tamper-resistant hardware platform into multiple, isolated virtual machines (VM), providing the appearance of multiple boxes on a single, general-purpose platform. To each VM, the TVMM provides the semantics of either an ``open box,'' i.e. a general-purpose hardware platform like today's PCs and workstations, or a ``closed box,'' an opaque special-purpose platform that protects the privacy and integrity of its contents like today's game consoles and cellular phones. The software stack in each VM can be tailored from the hardware interface up to meet the security requirements of its application(s). The hardware and TVMM can act as a trusted party to allow closed-box VMs to cryptographically identify the software they run, i.e. what is in the box, to remote parties. We explore the strengths and limitations of this architecture by describing our prototype implementation and several applications that we developed for it.

Thursday, February 17, 2005
2 PM - 3 PM
5331 CS

Peter M. Chen
Peter M. Chen, Brian D. Noble
UMich
When Virtual is Better than Real
HotOS VIII

URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/7758/
21324/00990073.pdf?isnumber=21324&prod=STD&arnumber=990073
&arnumber=990073&arSt=+133&ared=+138
&arAuthor=Chen%2C+P.M.%3B+Noble%2C+B.D.

Local URL: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/areas/sec/chennoble2001.pdf

This paper argues that the operating system and applications currently running on a real machine should relocate into a virtual machine. This structure enables services to be added below the operating system and to do so without trusting or modifying the operating system or applications. To demonstrate the usefulness of this structure, we describe three services that take advantage of it: secure logging, intrusion prevention and detection, and environment migration.

Thursday, February 24, 2005
2 PM - 3 PM
7331 CS

S. Sidiroglou

A. D. Keromytis
S. Sidiroglou, A. D. Keromytis
Columbia
Countering Network Worms Through Automatic Patch Generation
IEEE Security & Privacy

URL: http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~angelos/Papers/2005/wormpatch.pdf

We propose the first end-point architecture for automatically repairing software flaws such as buffer overflows that are exploited by zero-day worms. Our approach relies on source code transformations to quickly apply automaticallycreated (and tested) patches to vulnerable segments of the targeted applications, exploiting the fact that a worm must reveal its infection vector to achieve further infection. Preliminary experimental results indicate a success rate of 82%, and a repair time of 3 seconds.


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Created and maintained by Mihai Christodorescu (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~mihai)
Created: Fri Feb 04 16:32:13 2005
Last modified: Fri Feb 04 16:32:15 Central Standard Time 2005
 
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