CRII: SHF: Pointer-aware Memory: Boosting Cybersecurity by Making Strong Memory Protection Affordable for Irregular Applications

CRII：SHF：指针感知内存：通过为不规则应用程序提供强大的内存保护来增强网络安全

• 批准号: 1850025
• 负责人: Xun Jian
• 金额: $ 17.5万
• 依托单位: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-02-15 至 2022-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1850025&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CRII; SHF; Pointer; aware; Memory

Computer security weaknesses are threatening public safety and economies at global scale. Due to the need for stronger computer security, current processors implement many new types of strong memory protections, such as memory encryption and out-of-bound memory access detection. The research community is also actively investigating many other types of strong memory protections, such as memory address randomization, memory traffic shaping, etc. Unfortunately, strong memory protection significantly slows down memory accesses and, therefore, application performance. Through real-system measurements using latest processors, adding a single type of strong memory protection can more than double a program's total execution time. Such a high performance penalty can curtail the adoption of strong memory protections, thereby degrading cybersecurity and jeopardizing public safety. The goal of this project is to reduce the high performance cost that strong memory protection currently imposes on pointer-heavy applications; this performance cost is especially problematic for such applications, which are very sensitive to memory-access latency. This project will explore CPU hardware innovations to reduce the performance overheads of pointer de-referencing for different types of strong memory protection transparently and without programmer assistance. Reducing this performance cost will broaden the adoption of strong memory protection and thus help boost the cybersecurity of software.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.

计算机安全弱点正在威胁全球范围内的公共安全和经济。由于需要更强的计算机安全性，当前的处理器实现了许多新型的强内存保护，例如内存加密和出界内存访问检测。研究社区还在积极研究许多其他类型的强内存保护，例如内存地址随机化、内存流量整形等。不幸的是，强内存保护会显着减慢内存访问速度，从而降低应用程序性能。通过使用最新处理器的实际系统测量，添加单一类型的强大内存保护可以使程序的总执行时间增加一倍以上。如此高的性能损失可能会限制强大的内存保护的采用，从而降低网络安全并危害公共安全。该项目的目标是降低当前强内存保护对指针密集型应用程序造成的高性能成本；对于此类对内存访问延迟非常敏感的应用程序来说，这种性能成本尤其成问题。该项目将探索 CPU 硬件创新，以透明地减少不同类型强内存保护的指针取消引用的性能开销，而无需程序员协助。降低这种性能成本将扩大强大内存保护的采用，从而有助于提高软件的网络安全性。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Self-Reinforcing Memoization for Cryptography Calculations in Secure Memory Systems

安全内存系统中密码计算的自我强化记忆

• DOI: 10.1109/micro56248.2022.00055
• 发表时间: 2022-10
• 期刊: 2022 55th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO
• 作者: Wang, Xin;Talapkaliyev, Daulet;Hicks, Matthew;Jian, Xun
• 通讯作者: Jian, Xun

Eager Memory Cryptography in Caches

缓存中的渴望内存加密

• DOI: 10.1109/micro56248.2022.00054
• 发表时间: 2022-10
• 期刊: 2022 55th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO
• 作者: Wang, Xin;Kotra, Jagadish B.;Jian, Xun
• 通讯作者: Jian, Xun