Abstract
Network applications often require that a trust relationship is established between a trusted host (e.g., the server) and an untrusted host (e.g., the client). The remote entrusting problem is the problem of ensuring the trusted host that whenever a request from an untrusted host is served, the requester is in a genuine state, unaffected by malicious modifications or attacks.
Barrier slicing helps solve the remote entrusting problem. The computation of the sensitive client state is sliced and moved to the server, where it is not possible to tamper with it. However, this solution might involve unacceptable computation and communication costs for the server, especially when the slice to be moved is large. In this paper, we investigate the trade-off between security loss and performance overhead associated with moving only a portion of the barrier slice to the server and we show that this trade-off can be reduced to a multi-objective optimization problem. We describe how to make decisions in practice with reference to a case study, for which we show how to choose among the alternative options.
Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.References
Carroll, A., Juarez, M., Polk, J., Leininger, T.: Microsoft “Palladium”: a business overview. Microsoft Content Security Business Unit, August 2002
Ceccato, M., Dalla Preda, M., Nagra, J., Collberg, C., Tonella, P.: Barrier slicing for remote software trusting. In: Seventh IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM 2007), Paris, France, pp. 1–10 (2007)
Collette, Y., Siarry, P.: Multiobjective Optimization: Principles and Case Studies. Springer, Berlin (2004)
Defense, D.: Trusted computer security evaluation criteria. Washington, DC DOD 5200.28-STD (1985)
Dorigo, M., Gambardella, L.M.: Ant colony system: a cooperative learning approach to the traveling salesman problem. IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput. 1(1), 53–66 (1997)
Goldberg, D.E.: Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization and Machine Learning. Kluwer Academic, Boston (1989)
Kennell, R., Jamieson, L.H.: Establishing the genuinity of remote computer systems. In: Proceedings of 12th USENIX Security Symposium (2003)
Kirkpatrick, S., Gelatt, C.D., Vecchi, M.P.: Optimization by simulated annealing. Science 220(4598), 671–680 (1983)
Krinke, J.: Barrier slicing and chopping. In: Proceedings Third IEEE International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, pp. 81–87 (2003)
Krinke, J.: Slicing, chopping, and path conditions with barriers. Softw. Qual. J. 12(4), 339–360 (2004)
Lampson, B., Abadi, M., Burrows, M., Wobber, E.: Authentication in distributed systems: theory and practice. ACM Trans. Comput. Syst. 10(4), 265–310 (1992)
Sailer, R., Zhang, X., Jaeger, T., van Doorn, L.: Design and Implementation of a TCG-based Integrity Measurement Architecture, pp. 223–238 (2004)
Seshadri, A., Perrig, A., van Doorn, L., Khosla, P.K.: SWATT: software-based attestation for embedded devices. In: IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, pp. 272–283 (2004)
Seshadri, A., Luk, M., Shi, E., Perrig, A., van Doorn, L., Khosla, P.K.: Pioneer: verifying code integrity and enforcing untampered code execution on legacy systems. In: Proceedings of the 20th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Brighton, UK, October 23–26, pp. 1–16 (2005)
Tovey, C.A.: Hill climbing with multiple local optima. SIAM J. Matrix Anal. Appl. 6(3), 384–393 (1985)
Umesh Shankar, M.C., Tygar, J.D.: Side effects are not sufficient to authenticate software. Technical Report UCB/CSD-04-1363, EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley (2004)
van Oorschot, P., Somayaji, A., Wurster, G.: Hardware-assisted circumvention of self-hashing software tamper resistance. IEEE Trans. Dependable Secure Comput. 2(2), 82–92 (2005)
Weiser, M.D.: Program slices: formal, psychological, and practical investigations of an automatic program abstraction method. PhD dissertation, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1979)
Zhang, X., Gupta, R.: Hiding program slices for software security. In: CGO ’03: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 325–336 (2003)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ceccato, M., Preda, M.D., Nagra, J. et al. Trading-off security and performance in barrier slicing for remote software entrusting. Autom Softw Eng 16, 235–261 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10515-009-0047-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10515-009-0047-y