1. Systems with small trusted computing bases (TCBs) open possibility for automated security verification of systems Example: SecVisor - a 3kLOC security hypervisor designed to guarantee only user-approved code executes with kernel privilege [Seshadri et al. SOSP ‘07] Model: Develop formal models of SecVisor, hardware platform, and adversary. Total Verification Model Size = SecVisor Model + HW Model + Adversary Model Security Property: In every reachable state of the system, W  X permissions hold on page table and Device Exclusion Vector (DEV) implying only user-approved code executes with kernel privilege Vulnerabilities: Model checker identified two vulnerabilities in shadow page table (SPT) design that carry over to implementation. Both vulnerabilities caused by missing checks in SPT synchronization code Verification: After adding additional checks to synchronization code, the repaired system satisfied security property [Tech. Report CMU-Cylab-08-008] Hypervisor-Protected System Architecture Hardware Protected OS App. Hypervisor App. Automated Verification of a Security Hypervisor with a Realistic Hardware Model Jason Franklin, Sagar Chaki, Anupam Datta, Carnegie Mellon University Motivation Overview Goals: Develop tools and techniques to automatically verify security of systems that utilize memory protection mechanisms Design Analysis: Model check SecVisor’s design, find and repair two vulnerabilities, and verify repaired design Towards Realistic Hardware Models: Exploit system structure to prove security of arbitrarily large model (measured in terms of page table entries (PTEs)) by verifying only small model (with 1 PTE) Implementation Analysis: In-progress work includes verifying SecVisor’s C source code. Approach includes development of C-model of x86 hardware virtualization extensions, bit-precise adversarial model checker, and new techniques for scalable verification To make verification tractable, system model and adversary are restricted to unrealistically small number of PTEs Thus, these results do NOT demonstrate absence of attacks for realistic systems Exploit structure of memory protection mechanisms and access control properties to extend verification to realistic memory models. We prove: Security hypervisor provides layer of verifiable protection Design Analysis Tractability vs. Fidelity Small World Theorem (SWT) If SecVisor’s security properties are violated in a arbitrarily large but finite memory model then they are violated in a small memory model Source Code Verification  SWT implies that a small memory model is sufficient for verification of SecVisor’s access control-based memory protection. It generalizes to other secure systems: <10kLOC Narrow interface Adv IOMMU Kernel SecVisor KPT SPT Phy Mem Adv MMU DEV Principle of Efficiently-Verifiable Memory Protection: Small World Language and Logic (SWL) codifies the design principle behind efficiently-verifiable memory protection. Any system expressible in SWL satisfies the Small World Theorem and hence has an efficiently-verifiable memory protection subsystem. Sync KPT SPT User Mem Kernel Code Kernel Data W Vulnerability 2: Adversary adds writable alias to kernel code Vulnerability 1: Adversary gives eXe privilege to code stored in user memory X X W In-progress work includes verifying SecVisor’s C source code. Approach includes development of C-model of x86 hardware virtualization extensions, bit-precise adversarial model checker, and new techniques for scalable verification: Secure Composition: Verifying separate stages of systems (e.g., bootstrap and runtime) and securely compose the resulting verified subsystems Security Skeleton Extraction: Automatically extract just the security-relevant code, thereby greatly reducing verification costs Code Data Key