CRII: SHF: Pointer-aware Memory: Boosting Cybersecurity by Making Strong Memory Protection Affordable for Irregular Applications

计算机安全的弱点正威胁着全球范围内的公共安全和经济。由于需要更强的计算机安全性，目前的处理器实现了许多新型的强内存保护，如内存加密和内存访问检测。研究界也在积极研究许多其他类型的强内存保护，如内存地址随机化、内存流量整形等。不幸的是，强内存保护会显著降低内存访问速度，从而降低应用程序性能。通过使用最新处理器的实时系统测量，增加一种类型的强内存保护可以使程序的总执行时间增加一倍以上。如此高的性能损失可能会限制强内存保护的采用，从而降低网络安全并危及公共安全。这个项目的目标是降低高性能成本，强内存保护目前强加给指针较多的应用程序；这种性能成本对于这些对内存访问延迟非常敏感的应用程序来说尤其成问题。该项目将探索CPU硬件创新，以透明地减少指针取消引用对不同类型的强内存保护的性能开销，并且无需程序员的帮助。降低这种性能成本将扩大对强内存保护的采用，从而有助于提高软件的网络安全。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。

Computer security weaknesses are threatening public safety and economies at global scale. Due to the need for stronger computer security, current processors implement many new types of strong memory protections, such as memory encryption and out-of-bound memory access detection. The research community is also actively investigating many other types of strong memory protections, such as memory address randomization, memory traffic shaping, etc. Unfortunately, strong memory protection significantly slows down memory accesses and, therefore, application performance. Through real-system measurements using latest processors, adding a single type of strong memory protection can more than double a program's total execution time. Such a high performance penalty can curtail the adoption of strong memory protections, thereby degrading cybersecurity and jeopardizing public safety. The goal of this project is to reduce the high performance cost that strong memory protection currently imposes on pointer-heavy applications; this performance cost is especially problematic for such applications, which are very sensitive to memory-access latency. This project will explore CPU hardware innovations to reduce the performance overheads of pointer de-referencing for different types of strong memory protection transparently and without programmer assistance. Reducing this performance cost will broaden the adoption of strong memory protection and thus help boost the cybersecurity of software.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.