Improving application security with data flow assertions

Abstract

RESIN is a new language runtime that helps prevent security vulnerabilities, by allowing programmers to specify application-level data flow assertions. RESIN provides policy objects, which programmers use to specify assertion code and metadata; data tracking, which allows programmers to associate assertions with application data, and to keep track of assertions as the data flow through the application; and filter objects, which programmers use to define data flow boundaries at which assertions are checked. RESIN's runtime checks data flow assertions by propagating policy objects along with data, as that data moves through the application, and then invoking filter objects when data crosses a data flow boundary, such as when writing data to the network or a file.Using RESIN, Web application programmers can prevent a range of problems, from SQL injection and cross-site scripting, to inadvertent password disclosure and missing access control checks. Adding a RESIN assertion to an application requires few changes to the existing application code, and an assertion can reuse existing code and data structures. For instance, 23 lines of code detect and prevent three previously-unknown missing access control vulnerabilities in phpBB, a popular Web forum application. Other assertions comprising tens of lines of code prevent a range of vulnerabilities in Python and PHP applications. A prototype of RESIN incurs a 33% CPU overhead running the HotCRP conference management application.

Finding security bugs in web applications using a catalog of access control patterns

“…Run-Time Approaches to Web Application Security. Resin [37] is a runtime system that enforces information flow policies attached to data objects; it has been successfully applied to web applications. Jeeves [36], a similar language for enforcing information flow policies, has also been applied to the web.…”

Architectural Support for Software-Defined Metadata Processing

“…The PUMP architecture neither bounds the number of metadata bits nor the number of policies simultaneously supported; its microarchitectural optimizations (opgroups, tag compression, tag translation, and miss handler acceleration-see §4) achieve performance comparable to dedicated, hardware metadata propagation solutions ( §5). We believe the software-defined metadata policy model and its acceleration will be applicable to a large range of policies beyond those illustrated here, including sound information-flow control [7,8,32,56,62], fine-grained access control [67,71], integrity, synchronization [6,61], race detection [58,73], debugging, application-specific policies [70], and controlled generation and execution of dynamic code.…”

Investigation of taint analysis for Smartphone-implicit taint detection and privacy leakage detection

“…(3)In order to collect user information and analyze user behavior in some electronics markets, they will implement third party plug-ins to their own market in popular software in which may reveal user privacy information. (4)There is a lack of standardized management in the domestic Android electronics market and no system or mechanism to deal with software leakage [32].…”