Skip to main content

A Vision for Enhancing Security of Cryptography in Executables

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Book cover Engineering Secure Software and Systems (ESSoS 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 10953))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 741 Accesses

Abstract

This paper proposes an idea on how to use existing techniques from late stage software customization to improve the security of software employing cryptographic functions. In our vision, we can verify an implemented algorithm and replace it with a faster or more trusted implementation if necessary. We also want to be able to add encryption to binaries that currently do not employ any, or gain access to unencrypted data if an application depends on encryption.

To corroborate the feasibility of our vision, we developed a prototype that is able to identify cryptographic functions in highly optimized binary code and tests the identified functions for functional correctness, potentially also revealing backdoors.

The research leading to this paper has received funding from the AMASS project (H2020-ECSEL no. 692474).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 44.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Thompson, K.: Reflections on trusting trust. Commun. ACM 27(8), 761–763 (1984)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Egele, M., Brumley, D., Fratantonio, Y., Kruegel, C.: An empirical study of cryptographic misuse in Android applications. In: CCS 2013, pp. 73–84 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  3. CCC: Analyse einer Regierungs-Malware. Technical report, Chaos Computer Club (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Codenomicon, Google-Security: CVE-2014-0160. Available from MITRE, CVE-ID CVE-2014-0160, 3 Dec 2013

    Google Scholar 

  5. Bello, L.: CVE-2008-0166. Available from MITRE, CVE-ID CVE-2008-0166, 9 Jan 2008

    Google Scholar 

  6. Bruening, D., Zhao, Q., Amarasinghe, S.: Transparent dynamic instrumentation. ACM SIGPLAN Not. 47(7), 133–144 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Hiser, J., Nguyen-Tuong, A., Hawkins, W., McGill, M., Co, M., Davidson, J.: Zipr++: exceptional binary rewriting. In: FEAST 2017, pp. 9–15 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Majlesi-Kupaei, A., Kim, D., Anand, K., ElWazeer, K., Barua, R.: RL-Bin, robust low-overhead binary rewriter. In: FEAST 2017, pp. 17–22 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Chipounov, V., Kuznetsov, V., Candea, G.: The S2E platform: design, implementation, and applications. TOCS 30(1), 2 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Shoshitaishvili, Y., Wang, R., Salls, C., Stephens, N., Polino, M., Dutcher, A., Grosen, J., Feng, S., Hauser, C., Kruegel, C., Vigna, G.: SoK: (state of) the art of war: offensive techniques in binary analysis. In: S&P 2016 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Saudel, F., Salwan, J.: Triton: a dynamic symbolic execution framework. In: Symposium sur la sécurité des Technologies de l’information et des Communications, SSTIC, France, Rennes, June 3–5 2015, SSTIC, pp. 31–54 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Cadar, C., Dunbar, D., Engler, D.R., et al.: KLEE: unassisted and automatic generation of high-coverage tests for complex systems programs. In: OSDI. vol. 8, pp. 209–224 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Jiang, Y., Zhang, C., Wu, D., Liu, P.: Feature-based software customization: preliminary analysis, formalization, and methods. In: HASE 2016, pp. 122–131 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Kim, D., Sumner, W.N., Zhang, X., Xu, D., Agrawal, H.: Reuse-oriented reverse engineering of functional components from x86 binaries. In: ICSE 2014, pp. 1128–1139 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Xu, D., Ming, J., Wu, D.: Cryptographic function detection in obfuscated binaries via bit-precise symbolic loop mapping. In: S&P 2017, pp. 921–937 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Dockins, R., Foltzer, A., Hendrix, J., Huffman, B., McNamee, D., Tomb, A.: Constructing semantic models of programs with the software analysis workbench. In: VSTTE 2016, pp. 56–72 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Bassham III, L.E.: The advanced encryption standard algorithm validation suite (AESAVS). NIST Information Technology Laboratory (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  18. McKeeman, W.M.: Differential testing for software. Digit. Techn. J. 10(1), 100–107 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Papp, D., Buttyán, L., Ma, Z.: Towards semi-automated detection of trigger-based behavior for software security assurance. In: SAW 2018 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  20. ARM: mbedTLS. https://tls.mbed.org/

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thorsten Tarrach .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Brechelmacher, O., Krenn, W., Tarrach, T. (2018). A Vision for Enhancing Security of Cryptography in Executables. In: Payer, M., Rashid, A., Such, J. (eds) Engineering Secure Software and Systems. ESSoS 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10953. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94496-8_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94496-8_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94495-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94496-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics