FEAST 2019
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Workshop Program

 

  • Friday, November 15, 2019
    Room: Windsor Lancester

  • 7:30am – 9:00am Breakfast & Registration

  • 9:00am – 10:00am Keynote

    Session/Discussion Lead: Zhiqiang Lin (The Ohio State University)

  • Keynote: Regaining Control Over COTS: Software & Protocols

    Dr. J. Sukarno Mertoguno (Georgia Tech Research Institute)


    Abstract: The role of cyber infrastructure in modern life are ubiquitous and pervasive. Software and protocols are two of the main backbones of cyber infrastructure. Software and protocols features and complexity is continuously growing over time. Economic and engineering concerns have driven modern software and protocols into complex, feature rich, and deeply layered systems. One size fits all is the prevailing common of the shelf (COTS) model of software and protocol distribution and deployment, as it is the most economical way to maintain the product from the producer and IT management point of view. This model, however, is not optimal from cyber security point of view. Complexity and deep layering provides abundant opportunity for ‘weird machine’ to emerge, giving birth to myriads of vulnerabilities, resulting in expansive attack surface. Beside its is advantage in maintainability and simplifying production, one size fits all COTS model also put the manufacturer rigidly in control of customer’s software and protocols deployment and feature sets. This has never been a problem, in the past, until cyber security become an issue. Late stage software transformation and customization provides an opportunity to regain partial control over software and protocols feature sets and hence attack surface. It can improve cyber security by reducing unnecessary risks of software and protocol deployments. In this talk, we will be discussing the progress and challenges of late stage software and protocol customization.

     

    Bio: Dr. J. Sukarno Mertoguno serves as chief innovation officer for the Information and Cyber Science Directorate (ICSD) of Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). Before joining GTRI, he managed basic and applied science research in cyber security and complex software for The Office of Naval Research (ONR) where he developed several novel concepts and initiated many innovative programs. Prior to ONR, he was a system & chip architect and an entrepreneur in San Francisco Bay Area, where he worked on various chips and systems, such as embedded processors, switching fabric, network processors, and various other hardware accelerators, including TCP/IP, NFS, mobile anti-malware, etc. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from SUNY-Binghamton. His education background includes theoretical physics and electrical engineering.

     

  • 10:00am – 10:45am Coffee Break

  • 10:50am – 11:50am Session 1—Validation and Extraction

    Session/Discussion Lead: Zhiqiang Lin (The Ohio State University)

  • Source-free Machine-checked Validation of Native Code in Coq

    Kevin W. Hamlen (University of Texas at Dallas); Dakota Fisher (University of Texas at Dallas); Gilmore R. Lundquist (University of Texas at Dallas)

    • Abstract:

      Picinæ is an infrastructure for machine-proving properties of raw native coe programs without sources within the Coq program-proof co-development system. This facilitates formal reasoning about binary code that is inexpressible in source languages or for which no source code exists, such as hand-written assembly code or code resulting from binary transformations (e.g., binary hardening or debloating algorithms). Preliminary results validating some highly optimized, low-level subroutines for Intel and ARM architectures using this new framework are presented and discussed.

       

  • Automated Finite State Machine Extraction

    Yongheng Chen (NJU, Pennsylvania State University); Linhai Song (Pennsylvania State University); Xinyu Xing (Pennsylvania State University); Fengyuan Xu (National Key Lab for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University); Wenfei Wu (Tsinghua University);

    • Abstract:

      Finite state machine (FSM) is a type of computation models widely used in various software programs. Extracting implemented FSMs has many important applications in network, software engineering and security. In this paper, we first study how FSMs are implemented in real-world software. We then design a static analysis tool, FSMExtractor, to identify and synthesize implemented FSMs. Evaluation using 160 software programs shows that FSMExtractor can extract FSMs with good coverage and accuracy.

       

  • 12:00pm – 2:00pm Lunch

  • 2:00pm – 3:00pm Session 2—Vulnerability Discovery and Repair

    Session/Discussion Lead: Adam Doupé (Arizona State University)

  • Inuring: Live Attacker-guided Repair

    Eric Schulte (GrammaTech); Suan Yong (GrammaTech); David Melski (GrammaTech);

    • Abstract:

      We present inuring, a method of live attacker-guided repair of software vulnerabilities. We illustrate inuring with an implementation in an N-variant system. When an N-variant system detects an attack by diverging it converts a grave vulnerability, such as one that enables remote code execution, into a less serious denial-of-service vulnerability; the attacker can repeatedly cause divergence, which crashes or forces a reset of the system. Inuring is a general technique that uses information gleaned from an attack to repair the underlying vulnerability, thereby mitigating the denial-of-service vulnerability. Our demonstration of inuring leverages a novel technique of secure memory layout in N-variant systems. We use a weak memory protection technique in each variant, but are able to guarantee strong protection and remediation for the n-variant system. We present a case study application of inuring to the Apache web server demonstrating the efficacy and efficiency of the technique.

       

  • Exploring Effective Fuzzing Strategies to Analyze Communication Protocols

    Yurong Chen (George Washington University); Tian lan (George Washington University); Guru Venkataramani (George Washington University);

    • Abstract:

      While coverage-based greybox fuzzing has gained great success in the field of vulnerability detection due to its simplicity and efficiency, it could become less powerful when applied directly to protocol fuzzing due to the unique challenges of protocol fuzzing. In particular, the communication among multiple ends contains more than one packet, which are not necessarily dependent upon each other, i.e., fuzzing single (usually the first) packet can only achieve extremely limited code coverage. In this paper, we study such challenges and demonstrate the limitation of current non-stateful greybox fuzzer. In order to achieve higher code coverage, we design and implement a stateful, yield-drive protocol fuzzer, yFuzz, to explore the code related to different protocol states. yFuzz is a stateful fuzzer (which contains a state switching engine, together with a multi-state forkserver) to consistently and flexibly fuzz different states of an compiler-instrumented protocol program. Our experimental results on OpenSSL show that yFuzz achieves an improvement of 73% more code coverage and 2X unique crashes when comparing against fuzzing the first packet during a protocol handshake.

       

  • 3:00pm – 3:45pm Coffee Break

  • 3:45pm – 5:15pm Session 3—Optimization and Specialization

    Session/Discussion Lead: Adam Doupé (Arizona State University)

  • CodeMason: Binary-Level Profile-Guided Optimization

    David Williams-King (Columbia University); Junfeng Yang (Columbia University);

    • Abstract:

      Optimizing a program for a specific machine or a specific workload is possible with today's compilers, but infrequently used, despite significant performance gains. We implement workload specialization, or Profile-Guided Optimization (PGO), at the binary level. Our system CodeMason runs on x86_64 Linux. It performs static binary rewriting to obtain program profiles, then adjusts function ordering, alignment, and other binary-level details to achieve faster performance (particularly on the given workload). We obtain 1.7% average performance speedup on SPEC CPU 2006, and 11.8% speedup in the best case. These substantial performance improvements suggest that binary-level PGO may be widely useful when compiler-based PGO is impossible because the source code is inaccessible.

       

  • CARVE: Practical Security-Focused Software Debloating Using Simple Feature Set Mappings

    Michael Brown (Georgia Tech Research Institute); Santosh Pande (Georgia Tech);

    • Abstract:

      Software debloating is an emerging field of study aimed at improving the security and performance of software by removing excess library code and features that are not needed by the end user (called bloat). Software bloat is pervasive, and several debloating techniques have been proposed to address this problem. While these techniques are effective at reducing bloat, they are not practical for the average user, risk creating unsound programs and introducing vulnerabilities, and are not well suited for debloating complex software such as network protocol implementations. In this paper, we propose CARVE, a simple yet effective security-focused debloating technique that overcomes these limitations. CARVE employs static source code annotation to map software features source code, eliminating the need for advanced software analysis during debloating and reducing the overall level of technical sophistication required by the user. CARVE surpasses existing techniques by introducing debloating with replacement, a technique capable of preserving software interoperability and mitigating the risk of creating an unsound program or introducing a vulnerability. We evaluate CARVE in 12 debloating scenarios and demonstrate security and performance improvements that meet or exceed those of existing techniques.

       

  • Bloat Factors and Binary Specialization

    Anh Quach (Binghamton University); Aravind Prakash (Binghamton University);

    • Abstract:

      Code bloating in shared code modules has been proven pervasive in recent research. However, each study provides a different approach to measuring bloat in software. In this paper, we propose a system of metrics to effectively quantify bloating in binaries. Using them as pointers, we introduce a static approach to perform debloating for closed source code applications by creating specialized versions of shared libraries depending on how they are used by applications as indicated by our bloat factors. We conduct an extensive study and calculate bloat factors for over 3000 Linux applications using 896 shared libraries and provide directions for both debloating as well as future library development process. We evaluate our debloating technique on large programs and achieve a maximum code reduction of 25%.

       

  • 5:15pm – 5:45pm Discussion and Closing Remarks