We analyze the space of security policies that can be enforced by monitoring and modifying programs at run time. Our program monitors, called edit automata, are abstract machines that examine the sequence of application program actions and transform the sequence when it deviates from a specified policy. Edit automata have a rich set of transformational powers: They may terminate the application, thereby truncating the program action stream; they may suppress undesired or dangerous actions without necessarily terminating the program; and they may also insert additional actions into the event stream. After providing a formal definition of edit automata, we develop a rigorous framework for reasoning about them and their cousins: truncation automata (which can only terminate applications), suppression automata (which can terminate applications and suppress individual actions), and insertion automata (which can terminate and insert). We give a settheoretic characterization of the policies each sort of automaton can enforce and we provide examples of policies that can be enforced by one sort of automaton but not another. 1

Abstract. We consider the enforcement powers of program monitors, which intercept security-sensitive actions of a target application at run time and take remedial steps whenever the target attempts to execute a potentially dangerous action. A common belief in the security community is that program monitors, regardless of the remedial steps available to them when detecting violations, can only enforce safety properties. We formally analyze the properties enforceable by various program monitors and find that although this belief is correct when considering monitors with simple remedial options, it is incorrect for more powerful monitors that can be modeled by edit automata. We define an interesting set of properties called infinite renewal properties and demonstrate how, when given any reasonable infinite renewal property, to construct an edit automaton that provably enforces that property. We analyze the set of infinite renewal properties and show that it includes every safety property, some liveness properties, and some properties that are neither safety nor liveness. 1

Abstract. An extension of the λ-calculus is proposed, to study historybased access control. It allows for security policies with a possibly nested, local scope. We define a type and effect system that, given a program, extracts a history expression, i.e. a correct approximation to the set of histories obtainable at run-time. Validity of history expressions is non-regular, because the scope of policies can be nested. Nevertheless, a transformation of history expressions is presented, that makes verification possible through standard model checking techniques. A program will never fail at run-time if its history expression, extracted at compile-time, is valid. 1

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This dissertation presents a critical rethinking of the Java bytecode verification architecture from the perspective of a software engineer. In existing commercial implementations of the Java Virtual Machine, there is a tight coupling between the dynamic linking process and the bytecode verifier. This leads to delocalized and interleaving program plans, making the verifier difficult to maintain and comprehend. A modular mobile code verification architecture, called Proof Linking, is proposed. By establishing explicit verification interfaces in the form of proof obligations and commitments, and by careful scheduling of linking events, Proof Linking supports the construction of bytecode verifier as a separate engineering component, fully decoupled from Java's dynamic linking process. This turns out to have two additional benefits: (1) Modularization enables distributed verification protocols, in which part of the verification burden can be safely offloaded to remote sites; (2) Alternative static analyses can now be integrated into Java's dynamic linking process with ease, thereby making it convenient to extend the protection mechanism of Java. These benefits make Proof Linking a competitive verification architecture for mobile code systems. A prototype of the Proof Linking Architecture has been implemented in an open source Java Virtual Machine, the Aegis VM (http://aegisvm.sourceforge.net). On the

One way to guarantee that software behaves securely is to monitor programs at run time and check that they dynamically adhere to constraints specified by a security policy. Whenever a program monitor detects that untrusted software is attempting to execute a dangerous action, it takes remedial steps to ensure that only safe code actually gets executed. This thesis considers the space of policies enforceable by monitoring the run-time behaviors of programs and develops a practical language for specifying monitors ’ policies. In order to delineate the space of policies that monitors can enforce, we first have to define exactly what it means for a monitor to enforce a policy. We therefore begin by building a formal framework for analyzing policy enforcement; we precisely define policies, monitors, and enforcement. Having this framework allows us to consider the enforcement powers of program monitors and prove that they enforce an interesting set of policies that we define and call the infinite renewal properties. We show how, when given any reasonable infinite renewal property, to construct a

Abstract. While processor based systems often enforce memory protection to prevent the unintended sharing of data between processes, current systems built around reconfigurable hardware typically offer no such protection. Several reconfigurable cores are often integrated onto a single chip where they share external resources such as memory. While this enables small form factor and low cost designs, it opens up the opportunity for modules to intercept or even interfere with the operation of one another. We investigate the design and synthesis of a memory protection mechanism capable of enforcing policies expressed as a formal language. Our approach includes a specialized compiler that translates a policy of legal sharing to reconfigurable logic blocks which can be directly transferred to an FPGA. The efficiency of our access language design flow is evaluated in terms of area and cycle time across a variety of security scenarios.

A common mechanism for ensuring that software behaves securely is to monitor programs at run time and check that they dynamically adhere to constraints specified by a security policy. Whenever a program monitor detects that untrusted software is attempting to execute a dangerous action, it takes remedial steps to ensure that only safe code actually gets executed. This article improves our understanding of the space of policies enforceable by monitoring the run-time behaviors of programs. We begin by building a formal framework for analyzing policy enforcement: we precisely define policies, monitors, and enforcement. This framework allows us to prove that monitors enforce an interesting set of policies that we call the infinite renewal properties. We show how, when given any reasonable infinite renewal property, to construct a program monitor that provably enforces that policy. We also show that the set of infinite renewal properties includes some nonsafety policies, i.e., that monitors can enforce some nonsafety (including some purely liveness) policies. Finally, we demonstrate concrete examples of nonsafety policies enforceable by practical run-time monitors. Categories and Subject Descriptors: D.2.0 [Software Engineering]: General—protection mechanisms;

We present a framework for designing and composing services in a secure manner. Services can enforce security policies locally, and can invoke other services in a “call-by-contract” fashion. This mechanism offers a significant set of opportunities, each driving secure ways to compose services. We discuss how to correctly plan service orchestrations in some relevant classes of services and security properties. To this aim, we propose both a core functional calculus for services and a graphical design language. The core calculus is called λ req [10]. It features primitives for selecting and invoking services that respect given behavioural requirements. Critical code can be enclosed in security framings, with a possibly nested, local scope. These framings enforce safety properties on execution histories. A type and effect system over-approximates the actual run-time behaviour of services. Effects include the actions with possible security concerns, as well as information about which services may be selected at run-time. A verification step on these effects allows for detecting the viable plans that drive the selection of those services that match the security requirements on demand.

Secure cooperation is the problem of protecting mutually suspicious code units within the same execution environment from their potentially malicious peers. A statically enforceable capability type system is proposed for the JVM bytecode language to provide fine-grained access control of shared resources among peer code units. The design of the type system is inspired by recent advances in alias control type systems for object-oriented programming languages. The exercise of access rights and the propagation of capabilities are given a uniform interpretation as alias creation events. Each capability type assigns to a reference a dataflow trajectory, prescribing the set of aliases that is allowed to be created from the reference. An orthogonal and complementary type system for controlling object creation and downcasting is also designed to avoid a class of capability spoofing attacks. The combined type system successfully addresses a number of classical protection problems recast in a programming language context. This work therefore demonstrates the need and the feasibility of a languagebased approach to enforce application-level security among peer code units.