NDLI: Reducing TCB complexity for security-sensitive applications:three case studies

Content Provider	ACM Digital Library
Author	Helmuth, Christian Härtig, Hermann Singaravelu, Lenin Pu, Calton
Abstract	The large size and high complexity of security-sensitive applications and systems software is a primary cause for their poor testability and high vulnerability. One approach to alleviate this problem is to extract the security-sensitive parts of application and systems software, thereby reducing the size and complexity of software that needs to be trusted. At the system software level, we use the Nizza architecture which relies on a kernelized trusted computing base (TCB) and on the reuse of legacy code using trusted wrappers to minimize the size of the TCB. At the application level, we extract the security-sensitive portions of an already existing application into an AppCore. The AppCore is executed as a trusted process in the Nizza architecture while the rest of the application executes on a virtualized, untrusted legacy operating system. In three case studies of real-world applications (e-commerce transaction client, VPN gateway and digital signatures in an e-mail client), we achieved a considerable reduction in code size and complexity. In contrast to the few hundred thousand lines of current application software code running on millions of lines of systems software code, we have AppCores with tens of thousands of lines of code running on a hundred thousand lines of systems software code. We also show the performance penalty of AppCores to be modest (a few percent) compared to current software.
Starting Page	161
Ending Page	174
Page Count	14
File Format	PDF
ISSN	01635980
DOI	10.1145/1218063.1217951
Journal	ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review (OPSR)
Volume Number	40
Issue Number	4
Language	English
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publisher Date	1975-04-01
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Application security Trusted computing base
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Computer Networks and Communications Hardware and Architecture Information Systems

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

Reducing TCB complexity for security-sensitive applications: three case studies

Flicker:an execution infrastructure for tcb minimization

Hardware Security Device Facilitated Trusted Energy Services

How low can you go?:recommendations for hardware-supported minimal TCB code execution (OPSR, Vol. 42, Issue. 2)

Trusted virtual platforms:a key enabler for converged client devices

Does trusted computing remedy computer security problems?

Evil twins:two models for TCB reduction in HPC clusters

A Trusted Virtual Machine in an Untrusted Management Environment

Terra:a virtual machine-based platform for trusted computing

Reducing TCB complexity for security-sensitive applications:three case studies

Similar Documents

Reducing TCB complexity for security-sensitive applications: three case studies

Flicker:an execution infrastructure for tcb minimization

Hardware Security Device Facilitated Trusted Energy Services

How low can you go?:recommendations for hardware-supported minimal TCB code execution (OPSR, Vol. 42, Issue. 2)

Trusted virtual platforms:a key enabler for converged client devices

Does trusted computing remedy computer security problems?

Evil twins:two models for TCB reduction in HPC clusters

A Trusted Virtual Machine in an Untrusted Management Environment

Terra:a virtual machine-based platform for trusted computing

Reducing TCB complexity for security-sensitive applications:three case studies