Award Abstract #0430477
OS Support for Application Installation, Execution, and Management in an Untrustworthy World

NSF Org:	CNS Division of Computer and Network Systems
Initial Amendment Date:	September 15, 2004
Latest Amendment Date:	September 15, 2004
Award Number:	0430477
Award Instrument:	Standard Grant
Program Manager:	Karl N. Levitt CNS Division of Computer and Network Systems CSE Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering
Start Date:	September 15, 2004
Expires:	August 31, 2008 (Estimated)
Awarded Amount to Date:	$450000
Investigator(s):	Steven Gribble gribble@cs.washington.edu (Principal Investigator) Henry Levy (Co-Principal Investigator)
Sponsor:	University of Washington 4333 Brooklyn Ave NE SEATTLE, WA 98195 206/543-4043
NSF Program(s):	DATA AND APPLICATIONS SECURITY
Field Application(s):	0000912 Computer Science
Program Reference Code(s):	HPCC,9218,7456,7254
Program Element Code(s):	7228

ABSTRACT

Proposal Number: 0430477

TItle: OS Support for Application Installation, Execution, and Management in

an Untrustworthy World

PI: Steven Gribble

Modern computer users face many security threats and manageability obstacles. Today's software is increasingly complex, buggy, and prone to vulnerability. In addition to familiar threats such as worms and viruses, users must contend with new, more subtle attacks, such as the spread of spyware. Unfortunately, operating systems do little to help users address the security and vulnerability challenges of the networked environment. For example, it is difficult to determine what programs are running on a system, or what code is responsible for generating visible activity (such as network traffic, file system activity, or windowing activity).

This research focuses on the construction of a new application and operating system architecture based on lightweight virtual machines, with each application being both installed and isolated in its own VM. Installing and removing applications becomes simple, as a VM provides a clean container in which all of the application dependencies and resources can be embedded. Tracking an application and associating activity with its source becomes possible, since activity is easily observable through and traceable to the narrow VM interface. This architecture provides stronger security properties, since malicious applications are isolated from benign programs and data, and a vulnerability within an application no longer puts other applications at risk. The impact of this work will be to provide users with trustworthy infrastructure that they can depend on, and to mitigate damage to users in the case of successful attacks.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Alexander Moshchuk, Tanya Bragin, Damien Deville, Steven D. Gribble, and Henry M. Levy.  "SpyProxy: Execution-Based Detection of Malicious Web Content,"  Proceedings of the 16th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 2007),  v.August,  2007, 


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