IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
Identification of Kernel Memory Corruption Using Kernel Memory Secret Observation Mechanism
Summary :
Countermeasures against attacks targeting an operating system are highly effective in preventing security compromises caused by kernel vulnerability. An adversary uses such attacks to overwrite credential information, thereby overcoming security features through arbitrary program execution. CPU features such as Supervisor Mode Access Prevention, Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention and the No eXecute bit facilitate access permission control and data execution in virtual memory. Additionally, Linux reduces actual attacks through kernel vulnerability affects via several protection methods including Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization, Control Flow Integrity, and Kernel Page Table Isolation. Although the combination of these methods can mitigate attacks as kernel vulnerability relies on the interaction between the user and the kernel modes, kernel virtual memory corruption can still occur (e.g., the eBPF vulnerability allows malicious memory overwriting only in the kernel mode). We present the Kernel Memory Observer (KMO), which has a secret observation mechanism to monitor kernel virtual memory. KMO is an alternative design for virtual memory can detect illegal data manipulation/writing in the kernel virtual memory. KMO determines kernel virtual memory corruption, inspects system call arguments, and forcibly unmaps the direct mapping area. An evaluation of KMO reveals that it can detect kernel virtual memory corruption that contains the defeating security feature through actual kernel vulnerabilities. In addition, the results indicate that the system call overhead latency ranges from 0.002 µs to 8.246 µs, and the web application benchmark ranges from 39.70 µs to 390.52 µs for each HTTP access, whereas KMO reduces these overheads by using tag-based Translation Lookaside Buffers.
- Publication
- IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information Vol.E103-D No.7 pp.1462-1475
- Publication Date
- 2020/07/01
- Publicized
- 2020/03/04
- Online ISSN
- 1745-1361
- DOI
- 10.1587/transinf.2019ICP0011
- Type of Manuscript
- Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Information and Communication System Security)
- Category
- Network and System Security
Authors
Hiroki KUZUNO
SECOM Co., Ltd.,Okayama University
Toshihiro YAMAUCHI
Okayama University
Keyword
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Hiroki KUZUNO, Toshihiro YAMAUCHI, "Identification of Kernel Memory Corruption Using Kernel Memory Secret Observation Mechanism" in IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information,
vol. E103-D, no. 7, pp. 1462-1475, July 2020, doi: 10.1587/transinf.2019ICP0011.
Abstract: Countermeasures against attacks targeting an operating system are highly effective in preventing security compromises caused by kernel vulnerability. An adversary uses such attacks to overwrite credential information, thereby overcoming security features through arbitrary program execution. CPU features such as Supervisor Mode Access Prevention, Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention and the No eXecute bit facilitate access permission control and data execution in virtual memory. Additionally, Linux reduces actual attacks through kernel vulnerability affects via several protection methods including Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization, Control Flow Integrity, and Kernel Page Table Isolation. Although the combination of these methods can mitigate attacks as kernel vulnerability relies on the interaction between the user and the kernel modes, kernel virtual memory corruption can still occur (e.g., the eBPF vulnerability allows malicious memory overwriting only in the kernel mode). We present the Kernel Memory Observer (KMO), which has a secret observation mechanism to monitor kernel virtual memory. KMO is an alternative design for virtual memory can detect illegal data manipulation/writing in the kernel virtual memory. KMO determines kernel virtual memory corruption, inspects system call arguments, and forcibly unmaps the direct mapping area. An evaluation of KMO reveals that it can detect kernel virtual memory corruption that contains the defeating security feature through actual kernel vulnerabilities. In addition, the results indicate that the system call overhead latency ranges from 0.002 µs to 8.246 µs, and the web application benchmark ranges from 39.70 µs to 390.52 µs for each HTTP access, whereas KMO reduces these overheads by using tag-based Translation Lookaside Buffers.
URL: https://global.ieice.org/en_transactions/information/10.1587/transinf.2019ICP0011/_p
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@ARTICLE{e103-d_7_1462,
author={Hiroki KUZUNO, Toshihiro YAMAUCHI, },
journal={IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information},
title={Identification of Kernel Memory Corruption Using Kernel Memory Secret Observation Mechanism},
year={2020},
volume={E103-D},
number={7},
pages={1462-1475},
abstract={Countermeasures against attacks targeting an operating system are highly effective in preventing security compromises caused by kernel vulnerability. An adversary uses such attacks to overwrite credential information, thereby overcoming security features through arbitrary program execution. CPU features such as Supervisor Mode Access Prevention, Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention and the No eXecute bit facilitate access permission control and data execution in virtual memory. Additionally, Linux reduces actual attacks through kernel vulnerability affects via several protection methods including Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization, Control Flow Integrity, and Kernel Page Table Isolation. Although the combination of these methods can mitigate attacks as kernel vulnerability relies on the interaction between the user and the kernel modes, kernel virtual memory corruption can still occur (e.g., the eBPF vulnerability allows malicious memory overwriting only in the kernel mode). We present the Kernel Memory Observer (KMO), which has a secret observation mechanism to monitor kernel virtual memory. KMO is an alternative design for virtual memory can detect illegal data manipulation/writing in the kernel virtual memory. KMO determines kernel virtual memory corruption, inspects system call arguments, and forcibly unmaps the direct mapping area. An evaluation of KMO reveals that it can detect kernel virtual memory corruption that contains the defeating security feature through actual kernel vulnerabilities. In addition, the results indicate that the system call overhead latency ranges from 0.002 µs to 8.246 µs, and the web application benchmark ranges from 39.70 µs to 390.52 µs for each HTTP access, whereas KMO reduces these overheads by using tag-based Translation Lookaside Buffers.},
keywords={},
doi={10.1587/transinf.2019ICP0011},
ISSN={1745-1361},
month={July},}
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TY - JOUR
TI - Identification of Kernel Memory Corruption Using Kernel Memory Secret Observation Mechanism
T2 - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SP - 1462
EP - 1475
AU - Hiroki KUZUNO
AU - Toshihiro YAMAUCHI
PY - 2020
DO - 10.1587/transinf.2019ICP0011
JO - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SN - 1745-1361
VL - E103-D
IS - 7
JA - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
Y1 - July 2020
AB - Countermeasures against attacks targeting an operating system are highly effective in preventing security compromises caused by kernel vulnerability. An adversary uses such attacks to overwrite credential information, thereby overcoming security features through arbitrary program execution. CPU features such as Supervisor Mode Access Prevention, Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention and the No eXecute bit facilitate access permission control and data execution in virtual memory. Additionally, Linux reduces actual attacks through kernel vulnerability affects via several protection methods including Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization, Control Flow Integrity, and Kernel Page Table Isolation. Although the combination of these methods can mitigate attacks as kernel vulnerability relies on the interaction between the user and the kernel modes, kernel virtual memory corruption can still occur (e.g., the eBPF vulnerability allows malicious memory overwriting only in the kernel mode). We present the Kernel Memory Observer (KMO), which has a secret observation mechanism to monitor kernel virtual memory. KMO is an alternative design for virtual memory can detect illegal data manipulation/writing in the kernel virtual memory. KMO determines kernel virtual memory corruption, inspects system call arguments, and forcibly unmaps the direct mapping area. An evaluation of KMO reveals that it can detect kernel virtual memory corruption that contains the defeating security feature through actual kernel vulnerabilities. In addition, the results indicate that the system call overhead latency ranges from 0.002 µs to 8.246 µs, and the web application benchmark ranges from 39.70 µs to 390.52 µs for each HTTP access, whereas KMO reduces these overheads by using tag-based Translation Lookaside Buffers.
ER -
English
