Articles

Retrofitting Security in COTS Software with Binary Rewriting

O'Sullivan, Pádraig; Anand, Kapil; Kotha, Aparna; Smithson, Matthew; Barua, Rajeev; Keromytis, Angelos D.

We present a practical tool for inserting security features against low-level software attacks into third-party, proprietary or otherwise binary-only software. We are motivated by the inability of software users to select and use low-overhead protection schemes when source code is unavailable to them, by the lack of information as to what (if any) security mechanisms software producers have used in their toolchains, and the high overhead and inaccuracy of solutions that treat software as a black box. Our approach is based on SecondWrite, an advanced binary rewriter that operates without need for debugging information or other assist. Using SecondWrite, we insert a variety of defenses into program binaries. Although the defenses are generally well known, they have not generally been used together because they are implemented by different (non-integrated) tools. We are also the first to demonstrate the use of such mechanisms in the absence of source code availability. We experimentally evaluate the effectiveness and performance impact of our approach. We show that it stops all variants of low-level software attacks at a very low performance overhead, without impacting original program functionality.

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Title
Future Challenges in Security and Privacy for Academia and Industry: 26th IFIP TC 11 International Information Security Conference, SEC 2011, Lucerne, Switzerland, June 7-9, 2011: Proceedings
Publisher
Springer
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21424-0_13

More About This Work

Academic Units
Computer Science
Series
IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 354
Published Here
August 8, 2011