CRII: SaTC: Towards Detecting and Mitigating Vulnerabilities

该奖项全部或部分由2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117-2）资助。许多现实世界的攻击利用软件漏洞来破坏计算机系统，如服务器，台式机，智能手机和物联网（IoT）设备。最近的研究表明，它是具有挑战性的准确检测漏洞和快速修补漏洞。最先进的技术可以有效地缓解未修补的漏洞，但它们通常会牺牲系统的可用性。该项目的目标是改进脆弱性检测和缓解。该项目的新颖之处有两个方面。首先，项目团队正在开发一种方法，以显著提高漏洞检测的准确性。第二，项目小组正在开发一种方法，以大幅减少脆弱性缓解的可用性损失。该项目更广泛的意义和重要性在于：1）该项目开发的方法可以被其他解决漏洞的项目使用; 2）该项目的结果可以帮助软件行业设计检测漏洞和防御漏洞利用的机制; 3）该项目与本科生和研究生课程开发和学生咨询紧密结合。一群不同的本科生和研究生正在参与该项目，并发展他们在软件安全方面的兴趣和专业知识。该项目旨在开发一种准确的可验证性检测技术和一种不显眼的可验证性缓解技术。为了提高准确性，脆弱性检测技术使用脆弱性条件来检测脆弱性，每个脆弱性条件捕获一种类型的脆弱性的内在特征。为了减少可用性损失，脆弱性缓解技术使用基本块和程序路径作为脆弱性缓解的粒度。该项目包括三个关键任务：1）设计一个编码方案的脆弱性条件，2）开发一种基于模糊的技术来检测漏洞的脆弱性条件，和3）开发一种基于代码禁用的技术，以减轻脆弱性的基本块和程序路径的粒度。该项目的主要贡献包括技术的设计，技术的原型实现，以及对现实世界漏洞的实现进行评估。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得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来支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Numerous real-world attacks exploit software vulnerabilities to compromise computer systems such as servers, desktops, smart phones, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Recent studies show that it is challenging to detect vulnerabilities accurately and patch vulnerabilities rapidly. State-of-the-art techniques can mitigate unpatched vulnerabilities effectively, but they usually sacrifice the availability of systems. The goal of this project is to improve vulnerability detection and mitigation. The project’s novelties are two-fold. First, the project team is developing an approach to significantly increasing the accuracy of vulnerability detection. Second, the project team is developing an approach to substantially reducing the availability loss of vulnerability mitigation. The project's broader significance and importance are that 1) the approaches developed by the project can be used by other projects addressing vulnerabilities, 2) the outcome of the project can help the software industry in designing mechanisms to detect vulnerabilities and defend against vulnerability exploits; and 3) the project is tightly integrated with undergraduate-level and graduate-level curriculum development and student advising. A diverse group of undergraduate and graduate students are participating in the project and developing their interests and expertise in software security.The project aims to develop an accurate vulnerability-detection technique and an unobtrusive vulnerability-mitigation technique. To improve the accuracy, the vulnerability-detection technique uses vulnerability conditions, each of which captures the intrinsic characteristics of a type of vulnerabilities, to detect vulnerabilities. To reduce the availability loss, the vulnerability-mitigation technique uses basic blocks and program paths as the granularity of vulnerability mitigation. The project consists of three key tasks: 1) designing a scheme for encoding vulnerability conditions, 2) developing a technique based on fuzzing to detect vulnerabilities using vulnerability conditions, and 3) developing a technique based on code-disabling to mitigates vulnerabilities at the granularity of basic blocks and program paths. The major contributions of the project include the design of the techniques, prototype implementations of the techniques, and an evaluation of the implementations with real-world vulnerabilities.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.