Applying Specialization to Improve Survivability of OS Kernels (Immunix Project)

Abstract

The results are summarized for the DARPA contract Applying Specialization to Improve Survivability of OS Kernels (Immunix Project). The main objective of the Immunix Project is to improve the survivability of operating system (OS) kernels against security attacks. The important problem to be solved is to be able to survive attacks that exploit unknown vulnerabilities in system software. The primary method is to use specialization techniques and toolkit developed in tile Synthetix project. The key idea is to use the specialization toolkit to make the system adaptive with respect to security threats. Examples include restricting the system to prevent it entering states characterized by attacks, dynamic response to detected intrusion, dynamic change of previously granted privileges, and using run-time specialization to generate a large number of correct variants of many OS modules. so some of the variants will be resistant to new, previously unknown attacks.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 2000
Accession Number
ADA383665

Entities

People

  • Calton Pu
  • Crispin Cowan
  • Heather Hinton
  • Jonathan Walpole
  • Virgil Gligor

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Computer Network Security
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Contractors
  • Cybersecurity
  • Detection
  • Intrusion
  • Intrusion Detection
  • Kernels (Operating System)
  • Military Research
  • Operating Systems
  • Security
  • Students
  • System Software
  • Technology Transfer

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

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