tHYPon: Hypervisor Less Secure Reference Monitor
Jan 2016 - Apr 2017 (1 year 4 months)
Userspace software fault mechanisms increasingly depend on kernel space security mechanisms that extend DAC (Discretionary Access Control). These mechanisms have been targeted and exposed by various Linux kernel vulnerabilities, such as Mempodipper (CVE-2012-0056) or {get,put}_user on ARM (CVE-2013-6282). Currently, hardware IOMMU (Input/Output Memory Management Unit) mitigates hardware-based side channel attacks that target the kernel memory, however, IOMMU cannot mitigate vulnerabilities introduced by software developers in device drivers. Moreover, it is not practical to guarantee the security of the Linux kernel with formal methods given the big trusted computing base. The aim of this thesis is to extrude the kernel Reference Monitor in