Article

RIFLE: An Architectural Framework for User-Centric Information-Flow Security

Authors:

Neil Vachharajani,

Matthew J. Bridges,

Jonathan Chang,

Guilherme Ottoni,

Jason A. Blome,

George A. Reis,

Manish Vachharajani,

David I. AugustAuthors Info & Claims

MICRO 37: Proceedings of the 37th annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture

Pages 243 - 254

https://doi.org/10.1109/MICRO.2004.31

Published: 04 December 2004 Publication History

Abstract

Even as modern computing systems allow the manipulation and distribution of massive amounts of information, users of these systems are unable to manage the confidentiality of their data in a practical fashion. Conventional access control security mechanisms cannot prevent the illegitimate use of privileged data once access is granted. For example, information provided by a user during an online purchase may be covertly delivered to malicious third parties by an untrustworthy web browser. Existing information-flow security mechanisms do provide this assurance, but only for programmer-specified policies enforced during program development as a static analysis on special-purpose type-safe languages. Not only are these techniques not applicable to many commonly used programs, but they leave the user with no defense against malicious programmers or altered binaries. In this paper, we propose RIFLE, a runtime information-flow security system designed from the user's perspective. By addressing information-flow security using architectural support, RIFLE gives users a practical way to enforce their own information-flow security policy on all programs. We prove that, contrary to statements in the literature, run-time systems like RIFLE are no less secure than existing language-based techniques. Using a model of the architectural framework and a binary translator, we demonstrate RIFLE's correctness and illustrate that the performance cost is reasonable.

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Cited By

Brant CShrestha PMixon-Baca BChen KVarlioglu SElsayed NJin YCrandall JOliveira D(2021)Challenges and Opportunities for Practical and Effective Dynamic Information Flow TrackingACM Computing Surveys10.1145/348379055:1(1-33)Online publication date: 23-Nov-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3483790
Li BMa RWang XWang XHe J(2020)DepTaintProceedings of the 2020 4th International Conference on Management Engineering, Software Engineering and Service Sciences10.1145/3380625.3380642(34-41)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3380625.3380642
Runge TSchaefer IKnüppel ACleophas LKourie DWatson B(2019)Tool Support for Confidentiality-by-ConstructionACM SIGAda Ada Letters10.1145/3375408.337541338:2(64-68)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3375408.3375413
Show More Cited By

RIFLE: An Architectural Framework for User-Centric Information-Flow Security
1. Security and privacy
  1. Systems security
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Computing / technology policy

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

MICRO 37: Proceedings of the 37th annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture

December 2004

345 pages

ISBN:0769521266

Sponsors

SIGMICRO: ACM Special Interest Group on Microarchitectural Research and Processing

Publisher

IEEE Computer Society

United States

Publication History

Published: 04 December 2004

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MICRO37

Sponsor:

SIGMICRO

MICRO37: The 37th Annual International Symposium on Microarchitecture

December 4 - 8, 2004

Oregon, Portland

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MICRO 37 Paper Acceptance Rate 29 of 158 submissions, 18%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 484 of 2,242 submissions, 22%

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Cited By

Brant CShrestha PMixon-Baca BChen KVarlioglu SElsayed NJin YCrandall JOliveira D(2021)Challenges and Opportunities for Practical and Effective Dynamic Information Flow TrackingACM Computing Surveys10.1145/348379055:1(1-33)Online publication date: 23-Nov-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3483790
Li BMa RWang XWang XHe J(2020)DepTaintProceedings of the 2020 4th International Conference on Management Engineering, Software Engineering and Service Sciences10.1145/3380625.3380642(34-41)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3380625.3380642
Runge TSchaefer IKnüppel ACleophas LKourie DWatson B(2019)Tool Support for Confidentiality-by-ConstructionACM SIGAda Ada Letters10.1145/3375408.337541338:2(64-68)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3375408.3375413
Townley DKhasawneh KPonomarev DAbu-Ghazaleh NYu L(2019)LATCHProceedings of the 52nd Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture10.1145/3352460.3358327(969-982)Online publication date: 12-Oct-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3352460.3358327
Fu XCai HDumas MPfahl DApel SRusso A(2019)A dynamic taint analyzer for distributed systemsProceedings of the 2019 27th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3338906.3341179(1115-1119)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3338906.3341179
Taram MVenkat ATullsen DBahar IHerlihy MWitchel ELebeck A(2019)Context-Sensitive FencingProceedings of the Twenty-Fourth International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems10.1145/3297858.3304060(395-410)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3297858.3304060
Barber KBacha AZhou LZhang YTeodorescu R(2019)SpecShield: Shielding Speculative Data from Microarchitectural Covert ChannelsProceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques10.1109/PACT.2019.00020(151-164)Online publication date: 23-Sep-2019
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Arefi MAlexander GCrandall J(2018)PIITrackerProceedings of the 11th European Workshop on Systems Security10.1145/3193111.3193114(1-6)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3193111.3193114
Ardeshiricham AHu WMarxen JKastner R(2017)Register transfer level information flow tracking for provably secure hardware designProceedings of the Conference on Design, Automation & Test in Europe10.5555/3130379.3130775(1695-1700)Online publication date: 27-Mar-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3130379.3130775
Xiao GWang JLiu PMing JWu DBertino ESandhu RPretschner A(2016)Program-object Level Data Flow Analysis with Applications to Data Leakage and Contamination ForensicsProceedings of the Sixth ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy10.1145/2857705.2857747(277-284)Online publication date: 9-Mar-2016
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