Search results for "Hypervisor"

System for Executing Encrypted Native Programs

2017

An important aspect of protecting software from attack, theft of algorithms, or illegal software use, is eliminating the possibility of performing reverse engineering. One common method to deal with these issues is code obfuscation. However, in most case it was shown to be ineffective. Code encryption is a much more effective means of defying reverse engineering, but it requires managing a secret key available to none but the permissible users. The authors propose a new and innovative solution. Critical functions in protected software are encrypted using well-known encryption algorithms. Following verification by external attestation, a thin hypervisor is used as the basis of an eco-system …

Preventing Execution of Unauthorized Native-Code Software

2017

The business world is exhibiting a growing dependency on computer systems, their operations and the databases they contain. Unfortunately, it also suffers from an ever growing recurrence of malicious software attacks. Malicious attack vectors are diverse and the computer-security industry is producing an abundance of behavioral-pattern detections to combat the phenomenon. This paper proposes an alternative approach, based on the implementation of an attested, and thus trusted, thin-hypervisor. Secondary level address translation tables, governed and fully controlled by the hypervisor, are configured in order to assure that only pre-whitelisted instructions can be executed in the system. Thi…

Hypervisor-assisted Atomic Memory Acquisition in Modern Systems

2019

Reliable memory acquisition is essential to forensic analysis of a cyber-crime. Various methods of memory acquisition have been proposed, ranging from tools based on a dedicated hardware to software only solutions. Recently, a hypervisor-based method for memory acquisition was proposed (Qi et al., 2017; Martignoni et al., 2010). This method obtains a reliable (atomic) memory image of a running system. The method achieves this by making all memory pages non-writable until they are copied to the memory image, thus preventing uncontrolled modification of these pages. Unfortunately, the proposed method has two deficiencies: (1) the method does not support multiprocessing and (2) the method does…

Hypervisor-Based White Listing of Executables

2019

We describe an efficient system for ensuring code integrity of an operating system (OS), both its own code and application code. The proposed system can protect from an attacker who has full control over the OS kernel. An evaluation of the system's performance suggests the induced overhead is negligible. peerReviewed

Enforcing trust for execution-protection in modern environments

2016

The business world is exhibiting a growing dependency on computer systems, their operations and the databases they contain. Unfortunately, it also suffers from an ever growing recurrence of malicious software attacks. Malicious attack vectors are diverse and the computer-security industry is producing an abundance of behavioral-pattern detections to combat the phenomenon. Modern processors contain hardware virtualization capabilities that support implementation of hypervisors for the purpose of managing multiple Virtual-Machines (VMs) on a single computer platform. The facilities provided by hardware virtualization grant the hypervisor control of the hardware platform at an effective privil…

System for Executing Encrypted Java Programs

2017

Preventing reverse engineering of native and managed programs

2015

One of the important aspects of protecting software from attack, theft of algorithms, or illegal software use is eliminating the possibility of performing reverse engineering. One common method used to deal with these issues is code obfuscation. However, it is proven to be ineffective. Code encryption is a much more effective means of defying reverse engineering, but it requires managing a cryptographic key available to none but the permissible users. The thesis presents a system for managing cryptographic keys in a protected environment and supporting execution of encrypted code. The system has strong security guarantees. In particular, the cryptographic keys are never stored on the target…