Secure Programming for Embedded Systems Northsec 2019
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An In-Depth Study with All Rust Cves
Memory-Safety Challenge Considered Solved? An In-Depth Study with All Rust CVEs HUI XU, School of Computer Science, Fudan University ZHUANGBIN CHEN, Dept. of CSE, The Chinese University of Hong Kong MINGSHEN SUN, Baidu Security YANGFAN ZHOU, School of Computer Science, Fudan University MICHAEL R. LYU, Dept. of CSE, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Rust is an emerging programing language that aims at preventing memory-safety bugs without sacrificing much efficiency. The claimed property is very attractive to developers, and many projects start usingthe language. However, can Rust achieve the memory-safety promise? This paper studies the question by surveying 186 real-world bug reports collected from several origins which contain all existing Rust CVEs (common vulnerability and exposures) of memory-safety issues by 2020-12-31. We manually analyze each bug and extract their culprit patterns. Our analysis result shows that Rust can keep its promise that all memory-safety bugs require unsafe code, and many memory-safety bugs in our dataset are mild soundness issues that only leave a possibility to write memory-safety bugs without unsafe code. Furthermore, we summarize three typical categories of memory-safety bugs, including automatic memory reclaim, unsound function, and unsound generic or trait. While automatic memory claim bugs are related to the side effect of Rust newly-adopted ownership-based resource management scheme, unsound function reveals the essential challenge of Rust development for avoiding unsound code, and unsound generic or trait intensifies the risk of introducing unsoundness. Based on these findings, we propose two promising directions towards improving the security of Rust development, including several best practices of using specific APIs and methods to detect particular bugs involving unsafe code. -
Project Snowflake: Non-Blocking Safe Manual Memory Management in .NET
Project Snowflake: Non-blocking Safe Manual Memory Management in .NET Matthew Parkinson Dimitrios Vytiniotis Kapil Vaswani Manuel Costa Pantazis Deligiannis Microsoft Research Dylan McDermott Aaron Blankstein Jonathan Balkind University of Cambridge Princeton University July 26, 2017 Abstract Garbage collection greatly improves programmer productivity and ensures memory safety. Manual memory management on the other hand often delivers better performance but is typically unsafe and can lead to system crashes or security vulnerabilities. We propose integrating safe manual memory management with garbage collection in the .NET runtime to get the best of both worlds. In our design, programmers can choose between allocating objects in the garbage collected heap or the manual heap. All existing applications run unmodified, and without any performance degradation, using the garbage collected heap. Our programming model for manual memory management is flexible: although objects in the manual heap can have a single owning pointer, we allow deallocation at any program point and concurrent sharing of these objects amongst all the threads in the program. Experimental results from our .NET CoreCLR implementation on real-world applications show substantial performance gains especially in multithreaded scenarios: up to 3x savings in peak working sets and 2x improvements in runtime. 1 Introduction The importance of garbage collection (GC) in modern software cannot be overstated. GC greatly improves programmer productivity because it frees programmers from the burden of thinking about object lifetimes and freeing memory. Even more importantly, GC prevents temporal memory safety errors, i.e., uses of memory after it has been freed, which often lead to security breaches. Modern generational collectors, such as the .NET GC, deliver great throughput through a combination of fast thread-local bump allocation and cheap collection of young objects [63, 18, 61]. -
Ensuring the Spatial and Temporal Memory Safety of C at Runtime
MemSafe: Ensuring the Spatial and Temporal Memory Safety of C at Runtime Matthew S. Simpson, Rajeev K. Barua Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering University of Maryland, College Park College Park, MD 20742-3256, USA fsimpsom, [email protected] Abstract—Memory access violations are a leading source of dereferencing pointers obtained from invalid pointer arith- unreliability in C programs. As evidence of this problem, a vari- metic; and dereferencing uninitialized, NULL or “manufac- ety of methods exist that retrofit C with software checks to detect tured” pointers.1 A temporal error is a violation caused by memory errors at runtime. However, these methods generally suffer from one or more drawbacks including the inability to using a pointer whose referent has been deallocated (e.g. with detect all errors, the use of incompatible metadata, the need for free) and is no longer a valid object. The most well-known manual code modifications, and high runtime overheads. temporal violations include dereferencing “dangling” point- In this paper, we present a compiler analysis and transforma- ers to dynamically allocated memory and freeing a pointer tion for ensuring the memory safety of C called MemSafe. Mem- more than once. Dereferencing pointers to automatically allo- Safe makes several novel contributions that improve upon previ- ous work and lower the cost of safety. These include (1) a method cated memory (stack variables) is also a concern if the address for modeling temporal errors as spatial errors, (2) a compati- of the referent “escapes” and is made available outside the ble metadata representation combining features of object- and function in which it was defined. -
Exploring C Semantics and Pointer Provenance
Exploring C Semantics and Pointer Provenance KAYVAN MEMARIAN, University of Cambridge VICTOR B. F. GOMES, University of Cambridge BROOKS DAVIS, SRI International STEPHEN KELL, University of Cambridge ALEXANDER RICHARDSON, University of Cambridge ROBERT N. M. WATSON, University of Cambridge PETER SEWELL, University of Cambridge The semantics of pointers and memory objects in C has been a vexed question for many years. C values cannot be treated as either purely abstract or purely concrete entities: the language exposes their representations, 67 but compiler optimisations rely on analyses that reason about provenance and initialisation status, not just runtime representations. The ISO WG14 standard leaves much of this unclear, and in some respects differs with de facto standard usage — which itself is difficult to investigate. In this paper we explore the possible source-language semantics for memory objects and pointers, in ISO C and in C as it is used and implemented in practice, focussing especially on pointer provenance. We aim to, as far as possible, reconcile the ISO C standard, mainstream compiler behaviour, and the semantics relied on by the corpus of existing C code. We present two coherent proposals, tracking provenance via integers and not; both address many design questions. We highlight some pros and cons and open questions, and illustrate the discussion with a library of test cases. We make our semantics executable as a test oracle, integrating it with the Cerberus semantics for much of the rest of C, which we have made substantially more complete and robust, and equipped with a web-interface GUI. This allows us to experimentally assess our proposals on those test cases. -
Timur Doumler @Timur Audio
Type punning in modern C++ version 1.1 Timur Doumler @timur_audio C++ Russia 30 October 2019 Image: ESA/Hubble Type punning in modern C++ 2 How not to do type punning in modern C++ 3 How to write portable code that achieves the same effect as type punning in modern C++ 4 How to write portable code that achieves the same effect as type punning in modern C++ without causing undefined behaviour 5 6 7 � 8 � (�) 9 10 11 12 struct Widget { virtual void doSomething() { printf("Widget"); } }; struct Gizmo { virtual void doSomethingCompletelyDifferent() { printf("Gizmo"); } }; int main() { Gizmo g; Widget* w = (Widget*)&g; w->doSomething(); } Example from Luna @lunasorcery 13 struct Widget { virtual void doSomething() { printf("Widget"); } }; struct Gizmo { virtual void doSomethingCompletelyDifferent() { printf("Gizmo"); } }; int main() { Gizmo g; Widget* w = (Widget*)&g; w->doSomething(); } Example from Luna @lunasorcery 14 15 Don’t use C-style casts. 16 struct Widget { virtual void doSomething() { printf("Widget"); } }; struct Gizmo { virtual void doSomethingCompletelyDifferent() { printf("Gizmo"); } }; int main() { Gizmo g; Widget* w = (Widget*)&g; w->doSomething(); } Example from Luna @lunasorcery 17 18 19 20 float F0 00 80 01 int F0 00 80 01 21 float F0 00 80 01 int F0 00 80 01 float F0 00 80 01 char* std::byte* F0 00 80 01 22 float F0 00 80 01 int F0 00 80 01 float F0 00 80 01 char* std::byte* F0 00 80 01 Widget F0 00 80 01 01 BD 83 E3 float[2] F0 00 80 01 01 BD 83 E3 23 float F0 00 80 01 int F0 00 80 01 float F0 00 80 01 char* std::byte* -
Effective Types: Examples (P1796R0) 2 3 4 PETER SEWELL, University of Cambridge 5 KAYVAN MEMARIAN, University of Cambridge 6 VICTOR B
1 Effective types: examples (P1796R0) 2 3 4 PETER SEWELL, University of Cambridge 5 KAYVAN MEMARIAN, University of Cambridge 6 VICTOR B. F. GOMES, University of Cambridge 7 JENS GUSTEDT, INRIA 8 HUBERT TONG 9 10 11 This is a collection of examples exploring the semantics that should be allowed for objects 12 and subobjects in allocated regions – especially, where the defined/undefined-behaviour 13 boundary should be, and how that relates to compiler alias analysis. The examples are in 14 C, but much should be similar in C++. We refer to the ISO C notion of effective types, 15 but that turns out to be quite flawed. Some examples at the end (from Hubert Tong) show 16 that existing compiler behaviour is not consistent with type-changing updates. 17 This is an updated version of part of n2294 C Memory Object Model Study Group: 18 Progress Report, 2018-09-16. 19 1 INTRODUCTION 20 21 Paragraphs 6.5p{6,7} of the standard introduce effective types. These were added to 22 C in C99 to permit compilers to do optimisations driven by type-based alias analysis, 23 by ruling out programs involving unannotated aliasing of references to different types 24 (regarding them as having undefined behaviour). However, this is one of the less clear, 25 less well-understood, and more controversial aspects of the standard, as one can see from 1 2 26 various GCC and Linux Kernel mailing list threads , blog postings , and the responses to 3 4 27 Questions 10, 11, and 15 of our survey . See also earlier committee discussion . -
Memory Tagging and How It Improves C/C++ Memory Safety Kostya Serebryany, Evgenii Stepanov, Aleksey Shlyapnikov, Vlad Tsyrklevich, Dmitry Vyukov Google February 2018
Memory Tagging and how it improves C/C++ memory safety Kostya Serebryany, Evgenii Stepanov, Aleksey Shlyapnikov, Vlad Tsyrklevich, Dmitry Vyukov Google February 2018 Introduction 2 Memory Safety in C/C++ 2 AddressSanitizer 2 Memory Tagging 3 SPARC ADI 4 AArch64 HWASAN 4 Compiler And Run-time Support 5 Overhead 5 RAM 5 CPU 6 Code Size 8 Usage Modes 8 Testing 9 Always-on Bug Detection In Production 9 Sampling In Production 10 Security Hardening 11 Strengths 11 Weaknesses 12 Legacy Code 12 Kernel 12 Uninitialized Memory 13 Possible Improvements 13 Precision Of Buffer Overflow Detection 13 Probability Of Bug Detection 14 Conclusion 14 Introduction Memory safety in C and C++ remains largely unresolved. A technique usually called “memory tagging” may dramatically improve the situation if implemented in hardware with reasonable overhead. This paper describes two existing implementations of memory tagging: one is the full hardware implementation in SPARC; the other is a partially hardware-assisted compiler-based tool for AArch64. We describe the basic idea, evaluate the two implementations, and explain how they improve memory safety. This paper is intended to initiate a wider discussion of memory tagging and to motivate the CPU and OS vendors to add support for it in the near future. Memory Safety in C/C++ C and C++ are well known for their performance and flexibility, but perhaps even more for their extreme memory unsafety. This year we are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Morris Worm, one of the first known exploitations of a memory safety bug, and the problem is still not solved. -
Memory Management with Explicit Regions by David Edward Gay
Memory Management with Explicit Regions by David Edward Gay Engineering Diploma (Ecole Polytechnique F´ed´erale de Lausanne, Switzerland) 1992 M.S. (University of California, Berkeley) 1997 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science in the GRADUATE DIVISION of the UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA at BERKELEY Committee in charge: Professor Alex Aiken, Chair Professor Susan L. Graham Professor Gregory L. Fenves Fall 2001 The dissertation of David Edward Gay is approved: Chair Date Date Date University of California at Berkeley Fall 2001 Memory Management with Explicit Regions Copyright 2001 by David Edward Gay 1 Abstract Memory Management with Explicit Regions by David Edward Gay Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science University of California at Berkeley Professor Alex Aiken, Chair Region-based memory management systems structure memory by grouping objects in regions under program control. Memory is reclaimed by deleting regions, freeing all objects stored therein. Our compiler for C with regions, RC, prevents unsafe region deletions by keeping a count of references to each region. RC's regions have advantages over explicit allocation and deallocation (safety) and traditional garbage collection (better control over memory), and its performance is competitive with both|from 6% slower to 55% faster on a collection of realistic benchmarks. Experience with these benchmarks suggests that modifying many existing programs to use regions is not difficult. An important innovation in RC is the use of type annotations that make the structure of a program's regions more explicit. These annotations also help reduce the overhead of reference counting from a maximum of 25% to a maximum of 12.6% on our benchmarks. -
Aliasing Restrictions of C11 Formalized in Coq
Aliasing restrictions of C11 formalized in Coq Robbert Krebbers Radboud University Nijmegen December 11, 2013 @ CPP, Melbourne, Australia int f(int *p, int *q) { int x = *p; *q = 314; return x; } If p and q alias, the original value n of *p is returned n p q Optimizing x away is unsound: 314 would be returned Alias analysis: to determine whether pointers can alias Aliasing Aliasing: multiple pointers referring to the same object Optimizing x away is unsound: 314 would be returned Alias analysis: to determine whether pointers can alias Aliasing Aliasing: multiple pointers referring to the same object int f(int *p, int *q) { int x = *p; *q = 314; return x; } If p and q alias, the original value n of *p is returned n p q Alias analysis: to determine whether pointers can alias Aliasing Aliasing: multiple pointers referring to the same object int f(int *p, int *q) { int x = *p; *q = 314; return x *p; } If p and q alias, the original value n of *p is returned n p q Optimizing x away is unsound: 314 would be returned Aliasing Aliasing: multiple pointers referring to the same object int f(int *p, int *q) { int x = *p; *q = 314; return x; } If p and q alias, the original value n of *p is returned n p q Optimizing x away is unsound: 314 would be returned Alias analysis: to determine whether pointers can alias It can still be called with aliased pointers: x union { int x; float y; } u; y u.x = 271; return h(&u.x, &u.y); &u.x &u.y C89 allows p and q to be aliased, and thus requires it to return 271 C99/C11 allows type-based alias analysis: I A compiler -
SATE V Ockham Sound Analysis Criteria
NISTIR 8113 SATE V Ockham Sound Analysis Criteria Paul E. Black Athos Ribeiro This publication is available free of charge from: https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.IR.8113 NISTIR 8113 SATE V Ockham Sound Analysis Criteria Paul E. Black Software and Systems Division Information Technology Laboratory Athos Ribeiro Department of Computer Science University of Sao˜ Paulo Sao˜ Paulo, SP Brazil This publication is available free of charge from: https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.IR.8113 March 2016 Including updates as of June 2017 U.S. Department of Commerce Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Secretary National Institute of Standards and Technology Kent Rochford, Acting NIST Director and Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology Abstract Static analyzers examine the source or executable code of programs to find problems. Many static analyzers use heuristics or approximations to handle programs up to millions of lines of code. We established the Ockham Sound Analysis Criteria to recognize static analyzers whose findings are always correct. In brief the criteria are (1) the analyzer’s findings are claimed to always be correct, (2) it produces findings for most of a program, and (3) even one incorrect finding disqualifies an analyzer. This document begins by explaining the background and requirements of the Ockham Criteria. In Static Analysis Tool Exposition (SATE) V, only one tool was submitted to be re- viewed. Pascal Cuoq and Florent Kirchner ran the August 2013 development version of Frama-C on pertinent parts of the Juliet 1.2 test suite. We divided the warnings into eight classes, including improper buffer access, NULL pointer dereference, integer overflow, and use of uninitialized variable. -
An Evolutionary Study of Linux Memory Management for Fun and Profit Jian Huang, Moinuddin K
An Evolutionary Study of Linux Memory Management for Fun and Profit Jian Huang, Moinuddin K. Qureshi, and Karsten Schwan, Georgia Institute of Technology https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/huang This paper is included in the Proceedings of the 2016 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ATC ’16). June 22–24, 2016 • Denver, CO, USA 978-1-931971-30-0 Open access to the Proceedings of the 2016 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ATC ’16) is sponsored by USENIX. An Evolutionary Study of inu emory anagement for Fun and rofit Jian Huang, Moinuddin K. ureshi, Karsten Schwan Georgia Institute of Technology Astract the patches committed over the last five years from 2009 to 2015. The study covers 4587 patches across Linux We present a comprehensive and uantitative study on versions from 2.6.32.1 to 4.0-rc4. We manually label the development of the Linux memory manager. The each patch after carefully checking the patch, its descrip- study examines 4587 committed patches over the last tions, and follow-up discussions posted by developers. five years (2009-2015) since Linux version 2.6.32. In- To further understand patch distribution over memory se- sights derived from this study concern the development mantics, we build a tool called MChecker to identify the process of the virtual memory system, including its patch changes to the key functions in mm. MChecker matches distribution and patterns, and techniues for memory op- the patches with the source code to track the hot func- timizations and semantics. Specifically, we find that tions that have been updated intensively. -
Why Is Memory Safety Still a Concern?
Why is memory safety still a concern? PhD Candidacy Exam Mohamed (Tarek Ibn Ziad) Hassan [email protected] Department of Computer Science Columbia University April 9th, 2020 10:30 A.M. Location: TBD 1 Candidate Research Area Statement Languages like C and C++ are the gold standard for implementing a wide range of software systems such as safety critical firmware, operating system kernels, and network protocol stacks for performance and flexibility reasons. As those languages do not guarantee the validity of memory accesses (i.e., enforce memory safety), seemingly benign program bugs can lead to silent memory corruption, difficult-to-diagnose crashes, and most importantly; security exploitation. Attackers can compromise the security of the whole computing ecosystem by exploiting a memory safety error with a suitably crafted input. Since the spread of Morris worm in 1988 and despite massive advances in memory safety error mitigations, memory safety errors have risen to be the most exploited vulnerabilities. As part of my research studies in Columbia, I have worked on designing and implementing hardware primitives [1,2] that provide fine-grained memory safety protection with low performance overheads com- pared to existing work. My ongoing work in this research include extending the above primitives to system level protection in addition to addressing their current limitations. 2 Faculty Committee Members The candidate respectfully solicits the guidance and expertise of the following faculty members and welcomes suggestions for other important papers and publications in the exam research area. • Prof. Simha Sethumadhavan • Prof. Steven M. Bellovin • Prof. Suman Jana 1 Why is memory safety still a concern? PhD Candidacy Exam 3 Exam Syllabus The papers have broad coverage in the space of memory safety vulnerabilities and mitigations, which are needed to (1) make a fair assessment of current defensive and offensive techniques and (2) explore new threats and defensive opportunities.