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SGX-Box: Enabling Visibility on Encrypted Traffic using a Secure Middlebox Module

Published: 03 August 2017 Publication History

Abstract

A network middlebox benefits both users and network operators by offering a wide range of security-related in-network functions, such as web firewalls and intrusion detection systems (IDS). However, the wide usage of encryption protocol restricts functionalities of network middleboxes. This forces network operators and users to make a choice between end-to-end privacy and security. This paper presents SGX-Box, a secure middlebox system that enables visibility on encrypted traffic by leveraging Intel SGX technology. The entire process of SGX-Box ensures that the sensitive information, such as decrypted payloads and session keys, is securely protected within the SGX enclave. SGX-Box provides easy-to-use abstraction and a high-level programming language, called SB lang for handling encrypted traffic in middleboxes. It greatly enhances programmability by hiding details of the cryptographic operations and the implementation details in SGX enclave processing. We implement a proof-of-concept IDS using SB lang. Our preliminary evaluation shows that SGX-Box incurs acceptable performance overhead while it dramatically reduces middlebox developer's effort.

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Cited By

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  • (2025)ENDEMIC: End-to-End Network Disruptions – Examining Middleboxes, Issues, and Countermeasures – A SurveyACM Computing Surveys10.1145/371637257:7(1-42)Online publication date: 21-Feb-2025
  • (2024)A Transferable Deep Learning Framework for Improving the Accuracy of Internet of Things Intrusion DetectionFuture Internet10.3390/fi1603008016:3(80)Online publication date: 28-Feb-2024
  • (2024)Madtls: Fine-grained Middlebox-aware End-to-end Security for Industrial CommunicationProceedings of the 19th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3634737.3637640(962-976)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
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cover image ACM Other conferences
APNet '17: Proceedings of the First Asia-Pacific Workshop on Networking
August 2017
127 pages
ISBN:9781450352444
DOI:10.1145/3106989
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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Publication History

Published: 03 August 2017

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Author Tags

  1. Deep Packet Inspection
  2. Intel SGX
  3. Middlebox Security

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  • Research-article
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APNet'17
APNet'17: First Asia-Pacific Workshop on Networking
August 3 - 4, 2017
Hong Kong, China

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Overall Acceptance Rate 50 of 118 submissions, 42%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2025)ENDEMIC: End-to-End Network Disruptions – Examining Middleboxes, Issues, and Countermeasures – A SurveyACM Computing Surveys10.1145/371637257:7(1-42)Online publication date: 21-Feb-2025
  • (2024)A Transferable Deep Learning Framework for Improving the Accuracy of Internet of Things Intrusion DetectionFuture Internet10.3390/fi1603008016:3(80)Online publication date: 28-Feb-2024
  • (2024)Madtls: Fine-grained Middlebox-aware End-to-end Security for Industrial CommunicationProceedings of the 19th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3634737.3637640(962-976)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
  • (2024)Programming Network Stack for Physical Middleboxes and Virtualized Network FunctionsIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2023.330764132:2(971-986)Online publication date: Apr-2024
  • (2024)Interface-Based Side Channel in TEE-Assisted Networked ServicesIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2023.329401932:1(613-626)Online publication date: Feb-2024
  • (2024)PrivRE: Regular Expression Matching for Encrypted Packet Inspection2024 IEEE 44th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS)10.1109/ICDCS60910.2024.00123(1306-1317)Online publication date: 23-Jul-2024
  • (2024)Towards Shielding 5G Control Plane Functions2024 54th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN)10.1109/DSN58291.2024.00039(302-315)Online publication date: 24-Jun-2024
  • (2024)DE-GNNComputer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking10.1016/j.comnet.2024.110372245:COnline publication date: 1-May-2024
  • (2024)mdTLS: How to Make Middlebox-Aware TLS More Efficient?Information Security and Cryptology – ICISC 202310.1007/978-981-97-1238-0_3(39-59)Online publication date: 8-Mar-2024
  • (2024)ENS-RFMC: An Encrypted Network Traffic Sampling Method Based on Rule-Based Feature Extraction and Multi-hierarchical Clustering for Intrusion DetectionPattern Recognition10.1007/978-3-031-78383-8_6(78-92)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2024
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