Binary code analysis and transformation

In security research, we are often confronted with the problem of securing third party code that is available only in binary form. This necessitates the development of analysis and instrumentation techniques that work on binaries. There are other significant reasons for working with binary rather than source code: the ability to support programs written in multiple source languages, and independence from compiler optimizations. (With binary code, "what you see is what you execute.")

Our research is concerned with developing robust and efficient instrumentation techniques for binaries. Our earlier work was concerned with binary transformations for defending against memory corruption attacks  [4, 3]. More recently, we have been exploring the development of efficient taint analysis of binaries, and achieved a 3+ factor improvement in performance as compared to previous techniques  [2]. Our continuing research is concerned with the development of robust and efficient disassembly techniques, static analysis and optimization of binaries, etc. Based on these techniques, we are developing binary instrumentation techniques for sandboxing, fault and attack containment, integrity protection, and intrusion detection.

Related Publications

[1]  On the Limits of Information Flow Techniques for Malware Analysis and Containment

Lorenzo Cavallaro, Prateek Saxena and R. Sekar
Detection of Intrusions, Malware and Vulnerability Analysis (DIMVA) July, 2008. (Supercedes SECLAB07-03, November 2007).

[2]  Efficient Fine-Grained Binary Instrumentation with Applications to Taint-Tracking

Prateek Saxena, R. Sekar and Varun Puranik
ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization (CGO) April, 2008.

[3]  SELF: a Transparent Security Extension for ELF Binaries

Daniel DuVarney, V.N. Venkatakrishnan and Sandeep Bhatkar
New Security Paradigms Workshop (NSPW) August, 2003.

[4]  Address Obfuscation: An Efficient Approach to Combat a Broad Range of Memory Error Exploits

Sandeep Bhatkar, Daniel DuVarney and R. Sekar
USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security) August, 2003.

[5]  Empowering mobile code using expressive security policies

V.N. Venkatakrishnan, Ram Peri and R. Sekar
New Security Paradigms Workshop (NSPW) September, 2002.

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