Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Hybrid Information Flow Analysis for Real-World C Code

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Tests and Proofs (TAP 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 10375))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Information flow analysis models the propagation of data through a software system and identifies unintended information leaks. There is a wide range of such analyses, tracking flows statically, dynamically, or in a hybrid way combining both static and dynamic approaches.

We present a hybrid information flow analysis for a large subset of the C programming language. Extending previous work that handled a few difficult features of C, our analysis can now deal with arrays, pointers with pointer arithmetic, structures, dynamic memory allocation, complex control flow, and statically resolvable indirect function calls. The analysis is implemented as a plugin to the Frama-C framework.

We demonstrate the applicability and precision of our analyzer by applying it to an open-source cryptographic library. By combining abstract interpretation and monitoring techniques, we verify an information flow policy that proves the absence of control-flow based timing attacks against the implementations of many common cryptographic algorithms. Conversely, we demonstrate that our analysis is able to detect a known instance of this kind of vulnerability in another cryptographic primitive.

This work was supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR), project AnaStaSec, ANR-14-CE28-0014.

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

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
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. Assaf, M.: From qualitative to quantitative program analysis: permissive enforcement of secure information flow. Ph.D. thesis, Université de Rennes 1 (2015). https://hal.inria.fr/tel-01184857

  2. Assaf, M., Signoles, J., Tronel, F., Totel, É.: Program transformation for non-interference verification on programs with pointers. In: Janczewski, L.J., Wolfe, H.B., Shenoi, S. (eds.) SEC 2013. IAICT, vol. 405, pp. 231–244. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-39218-4_18

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Austin, T.H., Flanagan, C.: Efficient purely-dynamic information flow analysis. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN Fourth Workshop on Programming Languages and Analysis for Security, PLAS 2009, pp. 113–124. ACM (2009). http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1554339.1554353

  4. Barany, G.: Hybrid information flow analysis for programs with arrays. In: Hamilton, G., Lisitsa, A., Nemytykh, A.P. (eds.) Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Verification and Program Transformation, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 2nd. Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 216, pp. 5–23. Open Publishing Association, April 2016

    Google Scholar 

  5. Baudin, P., Filliâtre, J.C., Marché, C., Monate, B., Moy, Y., Prevosto, V.: ACSL: ANSI/ISO C Specification Language. http://frama-c.com/acsl.html

  6. Bernstein, D.J., Lange, T.: Failures in NIST’s ECC standards (2016). https://cr.yp.to/newelliptic/nistecc-20160106.pdf

  7. Bielova, N., Rezk, T.: A taxonomy of information flow monitors. In: Piessens, F., Viganò, L. (eds.) POST 2016. LNCS, vol. 9635, pp. 46–67. Springer, Heidelberg (2016). doi:10.1007/978-3-662-49635-0_3

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Blazy, S., Bühler, D., Yakobowski, B.: Structuring abstract interpreters through state and value abstractions. In: Bouajjani, A., Monniaux, D. (eds.) VMCAI 2017. LNCS, vol. 10145, pp. 112–130. Springer, Cham (2017). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-52234-0_7

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Ceara, D., Mounier, L., Potet, M.L.: Taint dependency sequences: a characterization of insecure execution paths based on input-sensitive cause sequences. In: The 3rd International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops (ICSTW 2010), pp. 371–380 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Denning, D.E., Denning, P.J.: Certification of programs for secure information flow. Commun. ACM 20(7), 504–513 (1977). http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/359636.359712

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  11. Genkin, D., Packmanov, L., Pipman, I., Shamir, A., Tromer, E.: Physical key extraction attacks on PCs. Commun. ACM 59(6), 70–79 (2016). http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/6/202646-physical-key-extraction-attacks-on-pcs/fulltext

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Goguen, J.A., Meseguer, J.: Security policies and security models. In: 1982 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, April 1982

    Google Scholar 

  13. Hedin, D., Bello, L., Sabelfeld, A.: Value-sensitive hybrid information flow control for a javascript-like language. In: Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE 28th Computer Security Foundations Symposium, CSF 2015, pp. 351–365. IEEE Computer Society (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Hedin, D., Birgisson, A., Bello, L., Sabelfeld, A.: JSFlow: tracking information flow in JavaScript and its APIs. In: Proceedings of the 29th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, SAC 2014, pp. 1663–1671. ACM (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Hunt, S., Sands, D.: On flow-sensitive security types. In: Conference Record of the 33rd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, POPL 2006, pp. 79–90. ACM (2006). http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1111037.1111045

  16. Kerschbaumer, C., Hennigan, E., Larsen, P., Brunthaler, S., Franz, M.: Information flow tracking meets just-in-time compilation. ACM Trans. Archit. Code Optim. 10(4), 38:1–38:25 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Kirchner, F., Kosmatov, N., Prevosto, V., Signoles, J., Yakobowski, B.: Frama-C: a software analysis perspective. Formal Aspects Comput. 27(3), 573–609 (2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00165-014-0326-7

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  18. Kosmatov, N., Signoles, J.: A lesson on runtime assertion checking with Frama-C. In: Legay, A., Bensalem, S. (eds.) RV 2013. LNCS, vol. 8174, pp. 386–399. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-40787-1_29

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Le Guernic, G., Banerjee, A., Jensen, T., Schmidt, D.A.: Automata-based confidentiality monitoring. In: Okada, M., Satoh, I. (eds.) ASIAN 2006. LNCS, vol. 4435, pp. 75–89. Springer, Heidelberg (2007). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-77505-8_7. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1782734.1782741

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  20. Percival, C.: Cache missing for fun and profit (2005). http://www.daemonology.net/papers/cachemissing.pdf

  21. Russo, A., Sabelfeld, A.: Dynamic vs. static flow-sensitive security analysis. In: 2010 23rd IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF), pp. 186–199, July 2010

    Google Scholar 

  22. Smaragdakis, Y., Balatsouras, G.: Pointer analysis. Found. Trends Program. Lang. 2(1), 1–69 (2015). https://yanniss.github.io/points-to-tutorial15.pdf

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Volpano, D., Irvine, C., Smith, G.: A sound type system for secure flow analysis. J. Comput. Secur. 4(2–3), 167–187 (1996). http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=353629.353648

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Vorobyov, K., Signoles, J., Kosmatov, N.: Shadow State Encoding for Efficient Monitoring of Block-level Properties Submitted for publication

    Google Scholar 

  25. Xu, W., Bhatkar, S., Sekar, R.: Taint-enhanced policy enforcement: a practical approach to defeat a wide range of attacks. In: Proceedings of the 15th Conference on USENIX Security Symposium, USENIX-SS 2006, vol. 15. USENIX Association (2006)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Inria Paris, Paris, France

    Gergö Barany

  2. Software Reliability and Security Laboratory, CEA, LIST, 91911, Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France

    Julien Signoles

Authors
  1. Gergö Barany
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Julien Signoles
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gergö Barany .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Sebastian Gabmeyer

  2. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Einar Broch Johnsen

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Barany, G., Signoles, J. (2017). Hybrid Information Flow Analysis for Real-World C Code. In: Gabmeyer, S., Johnsen, E. (eds) Tests and Proofs. TAP 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10375. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61467-0_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61467-0_2

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61466-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61467-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation