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Fully abstract trace semantics for low-level isolation mechanisms

Published: 24 March 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Many software systems adopt isolation mechanisms of modern processors as software security building blocks. Reasoning about these building blocks means reasoning about elaborate assembly code, which can be very complex due to the loose structure of the code. A way to overcome this complexity is giving the code a more structured semantics. This paper presents one such semantics, namely a fully abstract trace semantics, for an assembly language enhanced with protection mechanisms of modern processors. The trace semantics represents the behaviour of protected assembly code with simple abstractions, unburdened by low-level details, at the maximum degree of precision. Additionally, it captures the capabilities of attackers to protected software and simplifies providing a secure compiler targeting that language.

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Cited By

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  • (2019)Robustly Safe CompilationProgramming Languages and Systems10.1007/978-3-030-17184-1_17(469-498)Online publication date: 6-Apr-2019
  • (2017)A Formal Foundation for Secure Remote Execution of EnclavesProceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3133956.3134098(2435-2450)Online publication date: 30-Oct-2017
  • (2017)Symbolic Models for Isolated Execution Environments2017 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P)10.1109/EuroSP.2017.16(530-545)Online publication date: Apr-2017
  • Show More Cited By

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cover image ACM Conferences
SAC '14: Proceedings of the 29th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing
March 2014
1890 pages
ISBN:9781450324694
DOI:10.1145/2554850
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 24 March 2014

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SAC 2014: Symposium on Applied Computing
March 24 - 28, 2014
Gyeongju, Republic of Korea

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SAC '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 218 of 939 submissions, 23%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 1,650 of 6,669 submissions, 25%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2019)Robustly Safe CompilationProgramming Languages and Systems10.1007/978-3-030-17184-1_17(469-498)Online publication date: 6-Apr-2019
  • (2017)A Formal Foundation for Secure Remote Execution of EnclavesProceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3133956.3134098(2435-2450)Online publication date: 30-Oct-2017
  • (2017)Symbolic Models for Isolated Execution Environments2017 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P)10.1109/EuroSP.2017.16(530-545)Online publication date: Apr-2017
  • (2016)Implementing a secure abstract machineProceedings of the 31st Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing10.1145/2851613.2851796(2041-2048)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2016
  • (2015)Secure Compilation to Protected Module ArchitecturesACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/269950337:2(1-50)Online publication date: 16-Apr-2015
  • (2015)Fully abstract trace semantics for protected module architecturesComputer Languages, Systems and Structures10.1016/j.cl.2015.03.00242:C(22-45)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2015
  • (2015)A Secure Compiler for ML ModulesProgramming Languages and Systems10.1007/978-3-319-26529-2_3(29-48)Online publication date: 9-Dec-2015
  • (2015)A High-Level Model for an Assembly Language Attacker by Means of ReflectionProceedings of the First International Symposium on Dependable Software Engineering: Theories, Tools, and Applications - Volume 940910.1007/978-3-319-25942-0_11(168-182)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2015
  • (2013)Secure Compilation of Object-Oriented Components to Protected Module ArchitecturesProceedings of the 11th Asian Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems - Volume 830110.1007/978-3-319-03542-0_13(176-191)Online publication date: 9-Dec-2013

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