TWC: TTP Option: Medium: Collaborative: ENCORE - ENhanced program protection through COmpiler-REwriter cooperation

广泛使用的软件中的关键错误几乎每天都会被发现。它们目前让该软件的用户容易受到网络攻击，直到制造商最终提供修复程序-有时这需要长得令人无法接受的时间。目前，以二进制代码分发的商业现成软件的用户无法在事后自行修复此类漏洞，因为软件一旦编译为二进制形式，就不容易更改。该研究项目研究实现二进制软件的消费者端重写的技术。这种方法之所以吸引人，是因为它可以快速部署以响应新的威胁，而不需要等待代码生成器，并且可以执行软件开发人员不支持或预料不到的特定于消费者的安全策略。如果成功，这项研究将显著提高软件的安全性。消费者端的二进制重写目前是不可行的，因为二进制文件没有包含足够的信息来安全地进行重写。另一方面，出于对知识产权和软件盗版的担忧，代码生产者不想透露太多代码的实现细节。该项目的关键目标是使代码生成器能够使用少量元数据来补充他们的二进制代码，这些元数据可用于在消费者端执行复杂的二进制重写，但不会透露太多关于代码内部工作的额外信息，也不会使反向工程比以前容易得多。该项目将产生一个原型实现，由生产者端元数据派生引擎和使用此元数据的消费者端二进制重写引擎组成，以安全地执行二进制代码操作。

Critical errors in widely used software are discovered almost every day. They currently leave users of that software vulnerable to cyber attacks until the manufacturer eventually supplies a fix - sometimes this takes unacceptably long. There currently is no way that users of commercial off-the-shelf software that is distributed as binary code can go and fix such vulnerabilities themselves, ex post facto, because software is not easily changeable once it has been compiled to binary form. This research project investigates techniques for enabling consumer-side rewriting of binary software. The approach is appealing because it can be deployed quickly in response to new threats, without waiting for code-producers, and can enforce consumer-specific security policies unsupported or unforeseen by the software?s developers. If successful, this research will lead to significant improvements in software security.Consumer-side binary rewriting is currently not feasible because binary files don't contain enough information to do it safely. On the other hand, code producers don't want to reveal too many implementation details of their code due to intellectual property and software piracy concerns. The key goal of this project is to enable code producers to supplement their binary code with a small amount of metadata that can be used, consumer-side, to perform sophisticated binary rewriting, but without disclosing much extra information about the internal working of the code and without making reverse-engineering much easier than before. The project will produce a prototype implementation consisting of a producer-side metadata derivation engine, and a consumer-side binary rewriting engine using this metadata to safely perform binary code manipulation.