Improving information flow control design with security contexts
Name
932129591-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
932.43 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
3796a782b9c6753f18bed7c346a94222
Author(s)
Hemberger, Paul Wang
Advisor(s)
Srini Devadas.
Date Issued
2015
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This thesis outlines a new language feature for Ruby: the security context, which enables complex information flow control schemes to be written in Ruby without modification to the virtual machine. Security contexts are Ruby objects that act as transparent proxies and can be attached to other objects, allowing them to seamlessly modify parameters and return values into and out of those objects' methods. Security contexts are demonstrated to be simple and effective in creating two flow control applications that would otherwise pose significant challenge to build: taint tracking as a Ruby library, and data flow assertions for Ruby on Rails applications. The performance of these systems was benchmarked while running as a part of a Rails application, and reached acceptable performance: taint tracking had no impact on performance, and data flow assertions saw a 50% throughput decrease, while providing considerable protection against privacy leaks and security vulnerabilities.
Description
Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2015.
This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 83-85).
Subjects
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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