Malware analysis is a task of utmost importance in cyber-security. Two approaches exist for malware analysis: static and dynamic. Modern malware uses an abundance of techniques to evade both dynamic and static analysis tools. Current dynamic analysis solutions either make modifications to the running malware or use a higher privilege component that does the actual analysis. The former can be easily detected by sophisticated malware while the latter often induces a significant performance overhead. We propose a method that performs malware analysis within the context of the OS itself. Furthermore, the analysis component is camouflaged by a hypervisor, which makes it completely transparent to the running OS and its applications. The evaluation of the system’s efficiency suggests that the induced performance overhead is negligible.

With the advent of the mobile industry, we face new security challenges. ARM architecture is deployed in most mobile phones, homeland security, IoT, autonomous cars and other industries, providing a hypervisor API (via virtualization extension technology). To research the applicability of this virtualization technology for security in this platform is an interesting endeavor. The hypervisor API is an addition available for some ARMv7-a and is available with any ARMv8-a processor. Some ARM platforms also offer TrustZone, which is a separate exception level designed for trusted computing. However, TrustZone may not be available to engineers as some vendors lock it. We present a method of applying a thin hypervisor technology as a generic security solution for the most common operating system on the ARM architecture. Furthermore, we discuss implementation alternatives and differences, especially in comparison with the Intel architecture and hypervisor with Trust-Zone approaches. We provide performance benchmarks for using hypervisors for reverse engineering protection.

No abstract

Abstract-We present Truly-Protect that is a software protection method. Previously published protection methods relied solely on obscurity. Rolles proposed a general approach for breaking systems that are based on obscurity. We show that, under certain assumptions, Truly-Protect is resistant not only to Rolles' attack but also to any other attacks that do not violate the assumptions. Truly-Protect is based on a virtual machine that enables us to execute encrypted programs. Truly-Protect can serve as a platform for preventing software piracy of obtaining unlicensed copies. Truly-Protect by itself is not a digital rights management system but can form a basis for such a system. We discuss several scenarios and implementations and validate the performance penalty of our protection. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the 5th International Conference on Network and System Security (NSS2011). It was extended by expanding the system's description, adding more efficient parallel implementation, just-in-time decryption, and a comprehensive performance analysis. It also contains all the necessary proofs.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract