Title: CS/SE 6301-002: Language-based Security
Course Registration Number: 82035/82036
Times: MW 1:00–2:15
Location: ECSN 2.120
Instructor: Dr. Kevin Hamlen (hamlen AT utdallas)
Instructor's Office Hours: MW 2:15–3:15, ECSS 3.704
This course will introduce and survey the field of Language-based Software Security, in which techniques from compilers and programming language theory are leveraged to address issues in computer security. Topics include:
The aim of the course is to allow each student to develop a solid understanding of at least one of these topics, along with a more general familiarity with the range of research in the field. In-course discussion will highlight opportunities for cutting-edge research in each area. If you do research involving software security, this course will provide you with an array of powerful tools for addressing software security issues. If you do research involving programming languages or compilers, this course will show you how to take techniques that you already know and apply them to a new and important problem domain. If your career involves management or development of high-assurance software systems, this course will provide a comparative analysis of traditional versus language-based techniques.
The course is open to Ph.D. students and Masters students. Interested undergraduates should see the instructor for permission to take the course.
Suggested (non-mandatory) prerequisite: CS 6371 Advanced Programming Languages (or taken concurrently)
Homework (30%): For the first 10 weeks of the course, students will complete a series of programming exercises assigned through eLearning. Background material helpful for completing the exercises can be found in the online textbook Software Foundations.
Quizzes (30%): Most classes will begin with a short quiz testing the students comprension of an assigned reading for the day. Questions will typically be multiple choice or short answer. The easier questions will be designed to test whether the student has read the material, and the harder ones will test deeper understanding of more subtle points.
Class Participation (10%): Students are expected to come to class having read the assigned paper(s), and prepared with questions, critiques, and discussion topics. Regular attendance and class participation will count 10% towards their grades in the course.
Project (30%): Students will work individually or in a small team for the last 6 weeks of the course to complete a small project using the Coq theorem-prover. A typical project will involve implementing and formally verifying a standard algorithm of the student's choosing. Students will present their projects in class, with the presentation counting toward their project grade.
In our study of the Coq theorem proving system, we will be using the following online textbook:
For those who wish to explore Coq in greater depth (e.g., for developing their projects), the following book by the Coq developers is highly recommended:
Additionally, the following two texts available through the UTD library may be useful for general background on type theory and computer security, respectively:
On December 2, 2016, a panel of industry, government, and academic cybersecurity experts issued a report urging the U.S. president and president-elect to undertake an array of security education and prevention steps recognized as imperative for the future security of the nation and the world. The report is recommended (optional) reading:
| Date | Topic | Assigned Reading(s) | Coq Exercises |
| Program-Proof Co-development | |||
| Lecture 1: Mon 8/22 |
Introduction to Formal Methods and Secure Software Development Lecture Slides Coq Transcript |
Assignment 1 due 8/31 (Coq Basics) |
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| Lecture 2: Wed 8/24 |
Higher-order Types Coq Transcript |
Software Foundations: "Basics" chapter, up to and including the first two exercises (nandb, andb3). | |
| Lecture 3: Mon 8/29 |
Machine-verified Proofs Coq Transcript |
F. Williams. Investigating SANS/CWE Top 25 Programming Errors. Tech. Rep. ICTN 6870, E. Carolina University, 2009. | |
| Lecture 4: Wed 8/31 |
Inductive Propositions Coq Transcript |
J. Walden, J. Stuckman, and R. Scandariato. Predicting Vulnerable Components: Software Metrics vs Text Mining. In Proc. 25th Int. Sym. Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE), pp. 23–33, November 2014. | |
| No Class: Mon 9/5 |
No Class: Labor Day | Assignment 2 due 9/12 (Induction) |
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| Lecture 5: Wed 9/7 |
Proof Tactics Coq Transcript |
P. Hudak. Conception, Evolution, and Application of Functional Programming Languages. ACM Computing Surveys, 21(3):359–411, May 1989.
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| Lecture 6: Mon 9/12 |
Logical Operators Coq Transcript Veridrone Source Repository on GitHub |
G. Malecha, D. Ricketts, M.M. Alvarez, and S. Lerner. Towards Foundational Verification of Cyber-physical Systems, Invited Paper. In Proc. Science of Security for Cyber-Physical Systems Workshop (SoSCyPS), April 2016. | |
| Lecture 7: Wed 9/14 |
Contradiction, Constructivistic Logic, Non-termination Coq Transcript |
no assigned reading | Assignment 3 due 9/19 (Lists) |
| Lecture 8: Mon 9/19 |
Inversion, Verifying Total Correctness Coq Transcript FCF Source Repository on GitHub |
A. Petcher and G. Morrisett. The Foundational Cryptography Framework. In Proc. Int. Conf. Principles of Security and Trust (POST), 2015. | |
| Software Security Fundamentals | |||
| Lecture 9: Wed 9/21 |
The Science of Security Lecture Slides |
J. Bau and J. C. Mitchell. Security Modeling and Analysis. IEEE Security & Privacy 9(3):18–25, 2011. | Assignment 4 due 9/26 (Polymorphism) |
| Lecture 10: Mon 9/26 |
Formally Verified Compilation Lecture Slides |
X. Leroy. Formal Verification of a Realistic Compiler. Communications of the ACM, 52(7):107–115, 2009. | |
| Lecture 11: Wed 9/28 |
Machine Code Validation See eLearning for Coq implementation. |
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Assignment 5 due 10/3 (Tactics & Logic) |
| Lecture 12: Mon 10/3 |
Software Model-checking Lecture Slides |
M. Müller-Olm, D. Schmidt, and B. Steffen. Model-Checking: A Tutorial Introduction. In Proc. 6th Int. Sym. Static Analysis (SAS), pp. 330–354, September 1999.
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| Code-reuse Attacks and Defenses | |||
| Lecture 13: Wed 10/5 |
Return-oriented Programming Lecture Slides |
E.J. Schwartz, T. Avgerinos, and D. Brumley. Q: Exploit Hardening Made Easy. In Proc. 20th USENIX Security Symposium, 2011. | Assignment 6 due 10/17 (Inductive Propositions) |
| Lecture 14: Mon 10/10 |
Artificial Diversity Lecture Slides |
H. Shacham, M. Page, B. Pfaff, E.-J. Goh, N. Modadugu, and D. Boneh. On the Effectiveness of Address-Space Randomization. In Proc. ACM Conf. Computer and Communications Security (CCS), pp. 298–307, 2004. | |
| Lecture 15: Wed 10/12 |
Control-flow Integrity Lecture Slides |
M. Abadi, M. Budiu, Ú. Erlingsson, and J. Ligatti. Control-Flow Integrity: Principles, Implementations, and Applications. In Proc. ACM Conf. Computer and Communications Security, pp. 340–353, 2005. | |
| Lecture 16: Mon 10/17 |
Binary Stirring Lecture Slides |
R. Wartell, V. Mohan, K.W. Hamlen, and Z. Lin. Binary Stirring: Self-randomizing Instruction Addresses of Legacy x86 Binary Code. In Proc. ACM Conf. Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2012. | |
| Lecture 17: Wed 10/19 |
Binary Software Security Retrofitting Lecture Slides |
R. Wartell, V. Mohan, K.W. Hamlen, and Z. Lin. Securing Untrusted Code via Compiler-Agnostic Binary Rewriting. In Proc. 28th Annual Computer Security Applications Conf. (ACSAC), pp. 299–308, December 2012. | Assignment 7 due 11/2 (Case Study) |
| Lecture 18: Mon 10/24 |
Project Group Meetings | G. Morrisett, G. Tan, J. Tassarotti, J.-B. Tristan, and E. Gan. RockSalt: Better, Faster, Stronger SFI for the x86. In Proc. 33rd ACM SIGPLAN Conf. Programming Languages Design and Implementation (PLDI), pp. 395–404, June 2012. | |
| Lecture 19: Wed 10/26 |
Introduction to Hardware Security | no assigned reading | |
| In-lined Reference Monitors | |||
| Lecture 20: Mon 10/31 |
Theory of IRMs Lecture Slides |
F.B. Schneider. Enforceable Security Policies. ACM Transactions on Information and System Security, 3(1):30–50, 2000. | |
| Lecture 21: Wed 11/2 |
Aspect-Oriented Programming and IRMs Lecture Slides |
M. Jones and K.W. Hamlen. Disambiguating Aspect-oriented Security Policies. In Proc. 9th Int. Conf. Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD), pp. 193–204, March 2010. | |
| Lecture 22: Mon 11/7 |
Model-checking IRMs Lecture Slides |
K.W. Hamlen, M.M. Jones, and M. Sridhar. Aspect-oriented Runtime Monitor Certification. In Proc. 18th Int. Conf. Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS), pp. 126–140, March–April 2012. | Project |
| Lecture 23: Wed 11/9 |
Language-based Web Scripting Security Lecture Slides |
P.H. Phung, M. Monshizadeh, M. Sridhar, K.W. Hamlen, and V.N. Venkatakrishnan. Between Worlds: Securing Mixed JavaScript/ActionScript Multi-party Web Content. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), 12(4):443–457, July–August 2015. | |
| Information Flow Controls | |||
| Lecture 24: Mon 11/14 |
Intro to Information Flow Lecture Slides |
A. Sabelfeld and A.C. Myers. Language-Based Information-Flow Security. IEEE J. Selected Areas in Communications, 21(1):5–19, 2003. | |
| Lecture 25: Wed 11/16 |
Type-based Information Flow Controls Lecture Slides |
A.C. Myers. JFlow: Practical Mostly-Static Information Flow Control. In Proc. 26th ACM Sym. Principles of Programming Languages (POPL), pp. 228–241, 1999. | |
| No Class: Mon 11/21 |
No Class: Fall Break | ||
| No Class: Wed 11/23 |
No Class: Fall Break | ||
| Software Cyber Deception | |||
| Lecture 26: Mon 11/28 |
Honeypots and Honey-patching | F. Araujo, K.W. Hamlen, S. Biedermann, and S. Katzenbeisser. From Patches to Honey-Patches: Lightweight Attacker Misdirection, Deception, and Disinformation. In Proc. ACM Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2014. | |
| Lecture 27: Wed 11/30 |
Dynamic Secret Redaction | F. Araujo and K.W. Hamlen. Compiler-instrumented, Dynamic Secret-Redaction of Legacy Processes for Attacker Deception. In Proc. USENIX Security Symposium, 2015. | |
| Lecture 28: Mon 12/5 |
Project Presentations | Team 1: Lee, Liu, Wen Team 2: Joseph, Murley, Salwan, Suryanarayanan |
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| Lecture 29: Wed 12/7 |
Project Presentations | Team 3: Bauman, Duckworth, Wickramasuriya Team 4: Dixit, Joshi, Sanzgiri |
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| Projects Due Thu 12/15 11:59pm |
Submit projects via eLearning | Project Deliverables:
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