D4 Julkaistu kehittämis- tai tutkimusraportti tai -selvitys
Wide application security by low-level program code obfuscation techniques
Tekijät: Ville Leppänen, Sampsa Rauti, Samuel Lauren
Kustantaja: MATINE, Ministry of Defense
Kustannuspaikka: Puolustusministeriö PL 31 00131 HELSINKI
Julkaisuvuosi: 2014
eISBN: 978-951-25-2635-2
Verkko-osoite: http://www.defmin.fi/files/3035/2500M-0010.pdf
Tiivistelmä
The goal of our research project is to protect security of applications and software systems in a
whole new way: by diversifying implementations of all the software layers and their interfaces
on the binary level. The system call interface of the operating system is diversified uniquely for
each system and all the entry points to this interface are diversified in applications and librar-
ies accordingly. Moreover, the diversification in the library level is transitive. Malware that uses
prior knowledge about existing interfaces in an operating system is now rendered useless be-
cause of diversification. All in all, our diversification based solution is a proactive solution
against the prevailing operating system monoculture. The research project provided a proof-
of-concept implementation for Linux. Our solution does not aim at removing the possible ex-
istence of security holes in Linux but rather making it infeasible to deliver effective malware
through such security holes into the operating system environment.
The goal of our research project is to protect security of applications and software systems in a
whole new way: by diversifying implementations of all the software layers and their interfaces
on the binary level. The system call interface of the operating system is diversified uniquely for
each system and all the entry points to this interface are diversified in applications and librar-
ies accordingly. Moreover, the diversification in the library level is transitive. Malware that uses
prior knowledge about existing interfaces in an operating system is now rendered useless be-
cause of diversification. All in all, our diversification based solution is a proactive solution
against the prevailing operating system monoculture. The research project provided a proof-
of-concept implementation for Linux. Our solution does not aim at removing the possible ex-
istence of security holes in Linux but rather making it infeasible to deliver effective malware
through such security holes into the operating system environment.
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