CSR: Small: Repurposing Spatial Memory Safety Support in Commodity Processors for Temporal Memory Safety, Other Program Analyses, Hardware-Accelerated Data Structures, and More

在每一代计算机硬件中，研究人员和从业者都发现了硬件功能的用途，这是他们的设计师没有预料到的。该项目旨在寻找新的方法来适应通用和多用途的专用硬件，使用英特尔的内存保护扩展(MPX)作为概念验证。英特尔的设计者打算使用MPX来提高软件安全性，方法是确保一种称为空间存储安全的重要特性。该项目调查了MPX的许多其他令人惊讶的用途。该项目探索了将特殊用途的“硬件”视为通用硬件加速的“软件”的想法。特别是，该项目的目标是将MPX重新用于三个更广泛的用途，而不仅仅是它最初对空间存储安全的专门硬件支持。首先，将研究一种在MPX上透明增强临时存储安全的技术，以确保完全存储安全。其次，将设计和开发一个新的动态程序分析框架，将MPX重新用作通用元数据存储。最后，该项目将调查MPX作为通用硬件加速数据结构的潜力。该项目将影响当前和未来的研究人员、从业者和学生。该项目将充分释放英特尔专用硬件的潜力，探索其指令集架构的局限性，从而帮助设计配备更多通用功能的下一代处理器。这些下一代处理器将支持更安全、可靠和高性能的软件。将开发新的本科课程模块，将研究发现与教学相结合。K-12暑期班将作为一项外展和多样化计划提供。该项目还包括为非计算机科学家提供程序分析研讨会的计划，以支持更广泛的研究社区。该项目的主要结果将是软件原型和硬件模拟，以及基准、文档和研究论文。源代码、基准应用程序和文档将在GitHub上公开提供。论文也将在专门的项目网站上提供。项目储存库将在项目结束后至少维持五年。所有这些资源都将从项目网页上获得：http://research.cs.vt.edu/gpx.This奖项反映了国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In every generation of computer hardware, researchers and practitioners have found uses for hardware features that their designers did not anticipate. The project aims to find new ways to adapt special-purpose hardware for general and multiple ends, using Intel's Memory Protection Extensions (MPX) as a proof of concept. Intel's designers intended MPX to be used to improve software security by ensuring an important property called spatial memory safety. The project investigates many other surprising uses for MPX.The project explores the idea of viewing special-purpose "hardware" as general-purpose hardware-accelerated "software". In particular, the project aims to repurpose MPX for three broader uses, beyond its original specialized hardware support for spatial memory safety. First, a technique to transparently augment temporal memory safety on top of MPX will be studied to ensure full memory safety. Second, a novel dynamic program analysis framework, which repurposes the MPX as a general-purpose metadata store, will be designed and developed. Last, the project will investigate the potential of MPX as a general-purpose hardware-accelerated data structure.The project will impact both current and future researchers, practitioners, and students. The project will unlock the full potential of Intel's special-purpose hardware, explore the limitations of its instruction set architecture, and thus help design next-generation processors powered by more general-purpose features. These next-generation processors will enable more secure, reliable, and performant software. New undergraduate course modules will be developed to integrate research discovery with teaching. A K-12 summer class will be offered as an outreach and diversity program. The project also includes a plan to offer a program analysis workshop for non-computer scientists to support the broader research community.The project's main results will be software prototypes and hardware simulations, along with benchmarks, documentation, and research papers. The source code, benchmark applications, and documentation will be made publicly available on GitHub. The papers will be available on the dedicated project website as well. The project repository will be maintained for at least five years beyond the end of the project. All of these resources will be available from the project web page: http://research.cs.vt.edu/gpx.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.