CAREER: Securing Mobile Devices by Hardening their System Software

职业：通过强化系统软件来保护移动设备

• 批准号: 1846230
• 负责人: Ardalan Amiri Sani
• 金额: $ 49.67万
• 依托单位: University of California-Irvine
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-06-01 至 2024-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1846230&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Securing; Mobile; Devices; Hardening

Modern mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and wearables, are targets of an increasing number of security attacks. Moreover, according to Google, an increasing number of attacks on (Android-based) mobile devices are targeting the operating system kernel. For example, 44% of attacks in 2016 targeted the kernel versus 9% and 4% respectively in 2015 and 2014. Unfortunately, contemporary mobile operating systems are large, complex, and full of vulnerabilities; hence they fall victims to these attacks more often than not. This project attempts at improving the state of the art in security of mobile devices through a complementary and comprehensive set of approaches that can alleviate the problem of operating system vulnerability to attacks. This project enhances the security of mobile devices. As mobile devices play an increasingly important role in today's world, this project will have a high impact on global societies and economies. The project will also train students in systems software programming through outreach and tutorial activities. The project targets three approaches to enhancing the security of mobile devices: (i) a security monitor to provide important security and privacy guarantees despite a compromised operating system, (ii) novel and mobile-specific tools to find (and then fix) mobile operating system vulnerabilities, and (iii) a vetting layer to efficiently safeguard the operating system interface against malicious applications. This project will be conducted in three research thrusts, each of which will address the challenges of one of the aforementioned approaches. The first research thrust builds a trustworthy and extensible security monitor for mobile devices. The key idea in this thrust is the use of security domains, which are isolated domains each hosting a different security service providing a unique security or privacy guarantee. The second research thrust investigates techniques to find vulnerabilities in the mobile operating system. In particular, it investigates solutions to apply existing dynamic analysis techniques to mobile operating system codebase in order to find and patch its vulnerabilities. Most such techniques are only applicable to software running within a virtual machine (VM). Hence, the key idea in this research thrust is to either automatically port mobile operating system code to run within a virtual machine or run these techniques on the device itself. The third research thrust investigates methods to safeguard the operating system interface against malicious applications. It does so by incorporating an extensive set of security checks on system calls and other operating system application programming interface calls to limit the application's attack vector. This thrust consists of two tasks including an in-process shield space capable of securely and efficiently executing the vetting layer's security checks as well as solutions to automatically generate such security checks.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

智能手机、平板电脑和可穿戴设备等现代移动设备成为越来越多安全攻击的目标。此外，据谷歌称，针对（基于Android的）移动设备的攻击越来越多地针对操作系统内核。例如，2016 年 44% 的攻击针对内核，而 2015 年和 2014 年分别为 9% 和 4%。不幸的是，当代移动操作系统庞大、复杂且充满漏洞；因此，他们往往成为这些攻击的受害者。该项目试图通过一套互补且全面的方法来提高移动设备的安全性，从而缓解操作系统易受攻击的问题。该项目增强了移动设备的安全性。随着移动设备在当今世界发挥着越来越重要的作用，该项目将对全球社会和经济产生巨大影响。该项目还将通过外展和辅导活动对学生进行系统软件编程培训。该项目针对增强移动设备安全性的三种方法：（i）安全监视器，尽管操作系统受到损害，仍可提供重要的安全和隐私保证，（ii）新颖的移动专用工具来查找（然后修复）移动操作系统漏洞，以及（iii）审查层，以有效保护操作系统界面免受恶意应用程序的侵害。该项目将分三个研究方向进行，每个方向都将解决上述方法之一的挑战。第一个研究重点是为移动设备构建一个值得信赖且可扩展的安全监控器。这一推力的关键思想是使用安全域，这些安全域是独立的域，每个域托管不同的安全服务，提供独特的安全或隐私保证。第二个研究重点是研究寻找移动操作系统漏洞的技术。特别是，它研究了将现有动态分析技术应用于移动操作系统代码库的解决方案，以查找并修补其漏洞。大多数此类技术仅适用于在虚拟机 (VM) 内运行的软件。因此，本研究的关键思想是自动移植移动操作系统代码以在虚拟机中运行或在设备本身上运行这些技术。第三个研究重点是研究保护操作系统界面免受恶意应用程序侵害的方法。它通过对系统调用和其他操作系统应用程序编程接口调用进行广泛的安全检查来限制应用程序的攻击向量来实现这一点。该项目由两项任务组成，包括能够安全有效地执行审查层安全检查的进程内屏蔽空间以及自动生成此类安全检查的解决方案。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过评估认为值得支持利用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准。

项目成果

Minimizing a Smartphone's TCB for Security-Critical Programs with Exclusively-Used, Physically-Isolated, Statically-Partitioned Hardware

通过专用、物理隔离、静态分区的硬件，最大限度地减少智能手机的安全关键程序的 TCB

• DOI: 10.1145/3581791.3596864
• 发表时间: 2023-01
• 期刊: ACM MobiSys
• 作者: Yao, Zhihao;Seyed Talebi, Seyed Mohammadjavad;Chen, Mingyi;Amiri Sani, Ardalan;Anderson, Thomas
• 通讯作者: Anderson, Thomas

Sifter: Protecting Security-Critical Kernel Modules in Android through Attack Surface Reduction

Sifter：通过减少攻击面来保护 Android 中的安全关键内核模块

• DOI: 10.1145/3495243.3560548
• 发表时间: 2022-01
• 期刊: ACM MobiCom
• 作者: Hung, Hsin;Liu, Yingtong;Amiri Sani, Ardalan
• 通讯作者: Amiri Sani, Ardalan

Undo Workarounds for Kernel Bugs

撤消内核错误的解决方法

• 发表时间: 2021-01
• 期刊: USENIX Security Symposium
• 作者: Seyed Mohammadjavad Seyed Talebi;Zhihao Yao;Ardalan Amiri Sani;Zhiyun Qian;Daniel Austin
• 通讯作者: Daniel Austin

MegaMind: a platform for security & privacy extensions for voice assistants

MegaMind：安全平台

• DOI: 10.1145/3458864.3467962
• 发表时间: 2021-06-24
• 期刊: Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services
• 作者: S. Talebi;A. A. Sani;S. Saroiu;A. Wolman
• 通讯作者: A. Wolman

GLeeFuzz: Fuzzing WebGL Through Error Message Guided Mutation

GLeeFuzz：通过错误消息引导突变模糊 WebGL

• 发表时间: 2024-09-13
• 作者: Hui Peng;Zhihao Yao;A. A. Sani;D. Tian;Mathias Payer
• 通讯作者: Mathias Payer