TWC: Small: STRUCT: Enabling Secure and Trustworthy Compartments in Mobile Applications

TWC：小：STRUCT：在移动应用程序中启用安全且值得信赖的部分

• 批准号: 1800665
• 负责人: Long Lu
• 金额: $ 27.31万
• 依托单位: Northeastern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-11-01 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1800665&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: TWC; Small; STRUCT; Enabling; Secure

Society's dependence on mobile technologies rapidly increases as we entrust mobile applications with more and more private information and capabilities. Existing security research follows a common threat model that treats apps as monolithic entities and only captures attack surface between apps. However, recent research reveals that app internal attacks are emerging quickly as complex entities with conflicting interests are commonly included inside a single app to allow for rich features and fast development. This project, known as STRUCT, systematically investigates app compartmentalization as a novel and general approach to mitigating the critical yet unaddressed internal threats of apps. It applies this approach to major mobile platforms via solving four challenging and interesting research problems: (1) Deriving principles and models for designing intra-app security mechanisms; (2) Building compiler toolchains for automatically and securely compartmentalizing apps; (3) Building system-level enforcement mechanisms for open platforms; (4) Building app-level system-agnostic enforcement mechanisms for closed platforms. Solutions to these challenges together form a foundation to the design and implementation of intra-app security isolation and policy enforcement, which is currently nonexistent but in high demand. STRUCT has its broader impact in fostering a new direction in mobile security research and education as well as increasing society's adoption of mobile technology in security-sensitive scenarios.

随着我们将越来越多的私人信息和功能委托给移动应用程序，社会对移动技术的依赖迅速增加。现有的安全研究遵循常见的威胁模型，将应用程序视为整体实体，并且仅捕获应用程序之间的攻击面。然而，最近的研究表明，应用程序内部攻击正在迅速出现，因为具有冲突利益的复杂实体通常包含在单个应用程序中，以实现丰富的功能和快速开发。 该项目称为 STRUCT，系统地研究应用程序划分，将其作为一种新颖且通用的方法来减轻应用程序的关键但尚未解决的内部威胁。通过解决四个具有挑战性和有趣的研究问题，将该方法应用于主要移动平台：（1）推导设计应用内安全机制的原则和模型； (2) 构建编译器工具链以自动、安全地划分应用程序； （三）建立开放平台系统级执行机制； (4) 为封闭平台构建应用级系统无关的执行机制。 这些挑战的解决方案共同构成了应用程序内安全隔离和策略实施的设计和实施的基础，虽然目前还不存在，但需求量很大。 STRUCT 在培育移动安全研究和教育的新方向以及提高社会在安全敏感场景中采用移动技术方面具有更广泛的影响。