SaTC: CORE: Small: Better Software Security Through Caging

软件有bug，在第三方开发人员创建的库中很常见。不幸的是，任何库中的错误都可能使攻击者控制应用程序。此外，由于流行的库在数千个应用程序中使用，因此这些库成为攻击者的高杠杆目标。这项工作通过阻止一个库中的错误影响应用程序的其他部分来提高软件的安全性。这使得攻击者更难以破坏软件并伤害用户。这项工作建立了一种新的机制，可以将遗留程序转换为一系列组件，这些组件被隔离到称为“笼子”的不同域中。笼子彼此隔离的方式类似于操作系统虚拟机的隔离方式。每个笼子可能有自己的文件系统和网络接口，并且可能以不同的方式处理系统调用。这包括阻塞笼不需要的系统调用的可能性，例如禁用不需要的库中的网络接口。这种隔离还包括针对特定cage的资源和性能隔离，可防止恶意库或有bug的库崩溃或损害应用程序。该团队不仅致力于为这项工作开发一个研究原型，而且还利用这项工作来确保大型软件项目的安全。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Software has bugs, quite commonly in libraries that are created by third-party developers. Unfortunately, a bug in any library enables attackers to take control of an application. Furthermore, since popular libraries are used across thousands of applications, these libraries become a high-leverage target for attackers. This work improves the security of software by stopping bugs in one library from impacting other portions of the application. This makes it much more difficult for attackers to compromise software and harm users. This work builds a novel mechanism that can take legacy programs and convert them into a series of components that are isolated into different domains called cages. Cages are isolated from each other in a way that is similar to how operating system virtual machines are isolated. Each cage may have its own file system and network interface, and may handle system calls in a different manner. This includes the potential for blocking system calls that should not be needed by a cage, for example to disable the network interface in libraries that do not need it. This isolation also includes resource and performance isolation for a specific cage, preventing a malicious or buggy library from crashing or harming an application. The team is working to not only develop a research prototype for the effort, but also to use this work to secure large software projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.