23,883 research outputs found

    Static Enforcement of Role-Based Access Control

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    We propose a new static approach to Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) policy enforcement. The static approach we advocate includes a new design methodology, for applications involving RBAC, which integrates the security requirements into the system's architecture. We apply this new approach to policies restricting calls to methods in Java applications. We present a language to express RBAC policies on calls to methods in Java, a set of design patterns which Java programs must adhere to for the policy to be enforced statically, and a description of the checks made by our static verifier for static enforcement.Comment: In Proceedings WWV 2014, arXiv:1409.229

    KASR: A Reliable and Practical Approach to Attack Surface Reduction of Commodity OS Kernels

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    Commodity OS kernels have broad attack surfaces due to the large code base and the numerous features such as device drivers. For a real-world use case (e.g., an Apache Server), many kernel services are unused and only a small amount of kernel code is used. Within the used code, a certain part is invoked only at runtime while the rest are executed at startup and/or shutdown phases in the kernel's lifetime run. In this paper, we propose a reliable and practical system, named KASR, which transparently reduces attack surfaces of commodity OS kernels at runtime without requiring their source code. The KASR system, residing in a trusted hypervisor, achieves the attack surface reduction through a two-step approach: (1) reliably depriving unused code of executable permissions, and (2) transparently segmenting used code and selectively activating them. We implement a prototype of KASR on Xen-4.8.2 hypervisor and evaluate its security effectiveness on Linux kernel-4.4.0-87-generic. Our evaluation shows that KASR reduces the kernel attack surface by 64% and trims off 40% of CVE vulnerabilities. Besides, KASR successfully detects and blocks all 6 real-world kernel rootkits. We measure its performance overhead with three benchmark tools (i.e., SPECINT, httperf and bonnie++). The experimental results indicate that KASR imposes less than 1% performance overhead (compared to an unmodified Xen hypervisor) on all the benchmarks.Comment: The work has been accepted at the 21st International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions, and Defenses 201

    HardScope: Thwarting DOP with Hardware-assisted Run-time Scope Enforcement

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    Widespread use of memory unsafe programming languages (e.g., C and C++) leaves many systems vulnerable to memory corruption attacks. A variety of defenses have been proposed to mitigate attacks that exploit memory errors to hijack the control flow of the code at run-time, e.g., (fine-grained) randomization or Control Flow Integrity. However, recent work on data-oriented programming (DOP) demonstrated highly expressive (Turing-complete) attacks, even in the presence of these state-of-the-art defenses. Although multiple real-world DOP attacks have been demonstrated, no efficient defenses are yet available. We propose run-time scope enforcement (RSE), a novel approach designed to efficiently mitigate all currently known DOP attacks by enforcing compile-time memory safety constraints (e.g., variable visibility rules) at run-time. We present HardScope, a proof-of-concept implementation of hardware-assisted RSE for the new RISC-V open instruction set architecture. We discuss our systematic empirical evaluation of HardScope which demonstrates that it can mitigate all currently known DOP attacks, and has a real-world performance overhead of 3.2% in embedded benchmarks

    Alcohol, assault and licensed premises in inner-city areas

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    This report contains eight linked feasibility studies conducted in Cairns during 2010. These exploratory studies examine the complex challenges of compiling and sharing information about incidents of person-to-person violence in a late night entertainment precinct (LNEP). The challenges were methodological as well as logistical and ethical. The studies look at how information can be usefully shared, while preserving the confidentiality of those involved. They also examine how information can be compiled from routinely collected sources with little or no additional resources, and then shared by the agencies that are providing and using the information.Although the studies are linked, they are also stand-alone and so can be published in peer-reviewed literature. Some have already been published, or are ‘in press’ or have been submitted for review. Others require the NDLERF board’s permission to be published as they include data related more directly to policing, or they include information provided by police.The studies are incorporated into the document under section headings. In each section, they are introduced and then presented in their final draft form. The final published form of each paper, however, is likely to be different from the draft because of journal and reviewer requirements. The content, results and implications of each study are discussed in summaries included in each section.Funded by the National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund, an initiative of the National Drug StrategyAlan R Clough (PhD) School of Public Health, Tropical Medicine and Rehabilitation Sciences James Cook UniversityCharmaine S Hayes-Jonkers (BPsy, BSocSci (Hon1)) James Cook University, Cairns.Edward S Pointing (BPsych) James Cook University, Cairns
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