773 research outputs found
ZeroLeak: Using LLMs for Scalable and Cost Effective Side-Channel Patching
Security critical software, e.g., OpenSSL, comes with numerous side-channel
leakages left unpatched due to a lack of resources or experts. The situation
will only worsen as the pace of code development accelerates, with developers
relying on Large Language Models (LLMs) to automatically generate code. In this
work, we explore the use of LLMs in generating patches for vulnerable code with
microarchitectural side-channel leakages. For this, we investigate the
generative abilities of powerful LLMs by carefully crafting prompts following a
zero-shot learning approach. All generated code is dynamically analyzed by
leakage detection tools, which are capable of pinpointing information leakage
at the instruction level leaked either from secret dependent accesses or
branches or vulnerable Spectre gadgets, respectively. Carefully crafted prompts
are used to generate candidate replacements for vulnerable code, which are then
analyzed for correctness and for leakage resilience. From a cost/performance
perspective, the GPT4-based configuration costs in API calls a mere few cents
per vulnerability fixed. Our results show that LLM-based patching is far more
cost-effective and thus provides a scalable solution. Finally, the framework we
propose will improve in time, especially as vulnerability detection tools and
LLMs mature
Trusted Computing and Secure Virtualization in Cloud Computing
Large-scale deployment and use of cloud computing in industry
is accompanied and in the same time hampered by concerns regarding protection of
data handled by cloud computing providers. One of the consequences of moving
data processing and storage off company premises is that organizations have
less control over their infrastructure. As a result, cloud service (CS) clients
must trust that the CS provider is able to protect their data and
infrastructure from both external and internal attacks. Currently however, such
trust can only rely on organizational processes declared by the CS
provider and can not be remotely verified and validated by an external party.
Enabling the CS client to verify the integrity of the host where the
virtual machine instance will run, as well as to ensure that the virtual
machine image has not been tampered with, are some steps towards building
trust in the CS provider. Having the tools to perform such
verifications prior to the launch of the VM instance allows the CS
clients to decide in runtime whether certain data should be stored- or calculations
should be made on the VM instance offered by the CS provider.
This thesis combines three components -- trusted computing, virtualization technology
and cloud computing platforms -- to address issues of trust and
security in public cloud computing environments. Of the three components,
virtualization technology has had the longest evolution and is a cornerstone
for the realization of cloud computing. Trusted computing is a recent
industry initiative that aims to implement the root of trust in a hardware
component, the trusted platform module. The initiative has been formalized
in a set of specifications and is currently at version 1.2. Cloud computing
platforms pool virtualized computing, storage and network resources in
order to serve a large number of customers customers that use a multi-tenant
multiplexing model to offer on-demand self-service over broad network.
Open source cloud computing platforms are, similar to trusted computing, a
fairly recent technology in active development.
The issue of trust in public cloud environments is addressed
by examining the state of the art within cloud computing security and
subsequently addressing the issues of establishing trust in the launch of a
generic virtual machine in a public cloud environment. As a result, the thesis
proposes a trusted launch protocol that allows CS clients
to verify and ensure the integrity of the VM instance at launch time, as
well as the integrity of the host where the VM instance is launched. The protocol
relies on the use of Trusted Platform Module (TPM) for key generation and data protection.
The TPM also plays an essential part in the integrity attestation of the
VM instance host. Along with a theoretical, platform-agnostic protocol,
the thesis also describes a detailed implementation design of the protocol
using the OpenStack cloud computing platform.
In order the verify the implementability of the proposed protocol, a prototype
implementation has built using a distributed deployment of OpenStack.
While the protocol covers only the trusted launch procedure using generic
virtual machine images, it presents a step aimed to contribute towards
the creation of a secure and trusted public cloud computing environment
Security comparison of ownCloud, Nextcloud, and Seafile in open source cloud storage solutions
Cloud storage has become one of the most efficient and economical ways to store data over the web. Although most organizations have adopted cloud storage, there are numerous privacy and security concerns about cloud storage and collaboration. Furthermore, adopting public cloud storage may be costly for many enterprises. An open-source cloud storage solution for cloud file sharing is a possible alternative in this instance. There is limited information on system architecture, security measures, and overall throughput consequences when selecting open-source cloud storage solutions despite widespread awareness. There are no comprehensive comparisons available to evaluate open-source cloud storage solutions (specifically owncloud, nextcloud, and seafile) and analyze the impact of platform selections. This thesis will present the concept of cloud storage, a comprehensive understanding of three popular open-source features, architecture, security features, vulnerabilities, and other angles in detail. The goal of the study is to conduct a comparison of these cloud solutions so that users may better understand the various open-source cloud storage solutions and make more knowledgeable selections. The author has focused on four attributes: features, architecture, security, and vulnerabilities of three cloud storage solutions ("ownCloud," "Nextcloud," and "Seafile") since most of the critical issues fall into one of these classifications. The findings show that, while the three services take slightly different approaches to confidentiality, integrity, and availability, they all achieve the same purpose. As a result of this research, the user will have a better understanding of the factors and will be able to make a more informed decision on cloud storage options
Segurança de computadores por meio de autenticação intrínseca de hardware
Orientadores: Guido Costa Souza de Araújo, Mario Lúcio Côrtes e Diego de Freitas AranhaTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: Neste trabalho apresentamos Computer Security by Hardware-Intrinsic Authentication (CSHIA), uma arquitetura de computadores segura para sistemas embarcados que tem como objetivo prover autenticidade e integridade para código e dados. Este trabalho está divido em três fases: Projeto da Arquitetura, sua Implementação, e sua Avaliação de Segurança. Durante a fase de projeto, determinamos como integridade e autenticidade seriam garantidas através do uso de Funções Fisicamente Não Clonáveis (PUFs) e propusemos um algoritmo de extração de chaves criptográficas de memórias cache de processadores. Durante a implementação, flexibilizamos o projeto da arquitetura para fornecer diferentes possibilidades de configurações sem comprometimento da segurança. Então, avaliamos seu desempenho levando em consideração o incremento em área de chip, aumento de consumo de energia e memória adicional para diferentes configurações. Por fim, analisamos a segurança de PUFs e desenvolvemos um novo ataque de canal lateral que circunvê a propriedade de unicidade de PUFs por meio de seus elementos de construçãoAbstract: This work presents Computer Security by Hardware-Intrinsic Authentication (CSHIA), a secure computer architecture for embedded systems that aims at providing authenticity and integrity for code and data. The work encompassed three phases: Design, Implementation, and Security Evaluation. In design, we laid out the basic ideas behind CSHIA, namely, how integrity and authenticity are employed through the use of Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs), and we proposed an algorithm to extract cryptographic keys from the intrinsic memories of processors. In implementation, we made CSHIA¿s design more flexible, allowing different configurations without compromising security. Then, we evaluated CSHIA¿s performance and overheads, such as area, energy, and memory, for multiple configurations. Finally, we evaluated security of PUFs, which led us to develop a new side-channel-based attack that enabled us to circumvent PUFs¿ uniqueness property through their architectural elementsDoutoradoCiência da ComputaçãoDoutor em Ciência da Computação2015/06829-2; 2016/25532-3147614/2014-7FAPESPCNP
SoK: Design Tools for Side-Channel-Aware Implementations
Side-channel attacks that leak sensitive information through a computing
device's interaction with its physical environment have proven to be a severe
threat to devices' security, particularly when adversaries have unfettered
physical access to the device. Traditional approaches for leakage detection
measure the physical properties of the device. Hence, they cannot be used
during the design process and fail to provide root cause analysis. An
alternative approach that is gaining traction is to automate leakage detection
by modeling the device. The demand to understand the scope, benefits, and
limitations of the proposed tools intensifies with the increase in the number
of proposals.
In this SoK, we classify approaches to automated leakage detection based on
the model's source of truth. We classify the existing tools on two main
parameters: whether the model includes measurements from a concrete device and
the abstraction level of the device specification used for constructing the
model. We survey the proposed tools to determine the current knowledge level
across the domain and identify open problems. In particular, we highlight the
absence of evaluation methodologies and metrics that would compare proposals'
effectiveness from across the domain. We believe that our results help
practitioners who want to use automated leakage detection and researchers
interested in advancing the knowledge and improving automated leakage
detection
Specognitor: Identifying Spectre Vulnerabilities via Prediction-Aware Symbolic Execution
Spectre attacks exploit speculative execution to leak sensitive information.
In the last few years, a number of static side-channel detectors have been
proposed to detect cache leakage in the presence of speculative execution.
However, these techniques either ignore branch prediction mechanism, detect
static pre-defined patterns which is not suitable for detecting new patterns,
or lead to false negatives.
In this paper, we illustrate the weakness of prediction-agnostic
state-of-the-art approaches. We propose Specognitor, a novel prediction-aware
symbolic execution engine to soundly explore program paths and detect subtle
spectre variant 1 and variant 2 vulnerabilities. We propose a dynamic pattern
detection mechanism to account for both existing and future vulnerabilities.
Our experimental results show the effectiveness and efficiency of Specognitor
in analyzing real-world cryptographic programs w.r.t. different processor
families
A survey on the (in)security of trusted execution environments
As the number of security and privacy attacks continue to grow around the world, there is an ever increasing need to protect our personal devices. As a matter of fact, more and more manufactures are relying on Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to shield their devices. In particular, ARM TrustZone (TZ) is being widely used in numerous embedded devices, especially smartphones, and this technology is the basis for secure solutions both in industry and academia. However, as shown in this paper, TEE is not bullet-proof and it has been successfully attacked numerous times and in very different ways. To raise awareness among potential stakeholders interested in this technology, this paper provides an extensive analysis and categorization of existing vulnerabilities in TEEs and highlights the design flaws that led to them. The presented vulnerabilities, which are not only extracted from existing literature but also from publicly available exploits and databases, are accompanied by some effective countermeasures to reduce the likelihood of new attacks. The paper ends with some appealing challenges and open issues.Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga / CBUA
This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the SecureEDGE project
(PID2019-110565RB-I00), and by the by the Andalusian FEDER 2014–2020 Program through the SAVE project (PY18-3724)
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