Binghamton Research Magazine - Spring/Summer 2012 - (Page 10)

“Security is a classic example of evolution. There’s a constant battle between black hats and white hats, and it’s not even clear who the black hats and the white hats are a lot of the time.” — Nael Abu-Ghazaleh, associate professor of computer science without attention to security. They’d like to arm devices with a “Nanny Chip” and other features that make life more difficult for would-be attackers. The ‘Nanny Chip’ as a baby sitter — a “Nanny Chip” or “Nanny Core,” if you will. When computer programs run, there are expected behaviors. You can check up on them just like a nanny would check on a toddler who has been told he can play in a certain section of a playground. “It’s OK if we let our kids do something wrong as long as we catch them soon after, right?” asks Abu-Ghazaleh. “Permanent changes to the system are done at something called the system call boundary. As long as we’re OK when the system call happens, it’s all right.” This kind of protection is called reference monitoring. As instructions exit a program, the “Nanny Core” makes sure that the program follows the established rules. Ponomarev and Abu-Ghazaleh are also working on a related defense against a major class of vulnerabilities called code injection. Let’s say you have a Web form in which you ask for someone’s name and address. A hacker can put in not just that type of data but files from which she’s able to generate a new program within your machine. Her code has been “injected” into your server. In this scenario, the “nanny” assumes that any data coming from outside the program is not to be trusted. “Let’s say I have a Web server and the bad guys connect to it and pro- Ponomarev and Abu-Ghazaleh see new threats as well as new opportunities as computer architecture undergoes a period of rapid change. Moore’s Law, which predicted that the number of transistors on a chip would double every 18 months to two years, has held up for decades. But many experts now expect a breakdown in Moore’s Law, which is driving manufacturers to place processors with multiple cores onto a single chip. This “multi-core” approach improves speed and performance but can open new avenues of attack. “Things have been really, really good,” Abu-Ghazaleh says. “Computer architecture performance has been improving at such a rapid rate, eclipsing probably any other human system. But physics and some other developments have put us at a point where we can’t do things the way we have been. Moore’s Law is coming to a screeching halt.” Most modern processors run multiple programs at the same time. The main program is running, but there is also hardware available to run something else. Abu-Ghazaleh and Ponomarev propose using the “spare” hardware vide some garbage,” Abu-Ghazaleh says. “I want to treat that data carefully. What we do is mark that data as untrustworthy, and any data that it touches is also suspicious. Then, as we are running our program, we check what it is doing with this bad data. We catch, let’s say, a branch that is generated by this bad data, and we know this data should never cause a branch.” There’s a major drawback to this approach, known as “information flow tracking,” however: It can slow down a program considerably. Computer architecture: The design of a computer system. It sets the standard for all devices that connect to it and all the software that runs on it. It is based on the type of programs that will run (business, scientific) and the number of programs that run concurrently. Encryption: The reversible transformation of data from the original to a difficult-to-interpret format as a mechanism for protecting its confidentiality, integrity and sometimes its authenticity. Multi-core chip: A computer chip that contains more than one CPU (processing unit). Multi-core chips allow for greater increases in computing power than a single CPU continually made to run faster. Source: PC Magazine Binghamton University • BINGHAMTON RESEARCH • Spring/Summer 2012 10

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Binghamton Research Magazine - Spring/Summer 2012

Binghamton Research Magazine - Spring/Summer 2012
Contents
About Binghamton Research
Welcome
Briefs
Digital defenders
Jockeying for genetic advantage
The unfiltered truth
Spring awakening
Wall Street watchdog
Principles of the universe demand principled engineers
Engineering and Science Building
Graduate research
Undergraduate research
A piece of the puzzle
Crossword puzzle

Binghamton Research Magazine - Spring/Summer 2012