CS 155 Spring 2015

Secure Architecture
Principles
• Isolation and Least Privilege
• Access Control Concepts
• Operating Systems
• Browser Isolation and Least Privilege

John Mitchell
 Announcement
Thursday lecture:
Alex Stamos, Yahoo! VP of Information Security (CISO) 
– He is taking time from his busy schedule to join us
– Please come to class, in person, show your appreciation!

John Mitchell
Secure Architecture
Principles

Isolation and
Least Privilege
John Mitchell
 Principles of Secure Design
• Compartmentalization
– Isolation
– Principle of least privilege
• Defense in depth
– Use more than one security mechanism
– Secure the weakest link
– Fail securely
• Keep it simple

John Mitchell
 Principle of Least Privilege
• What’s a privilege?
– Ability to access or modify a resource
• Assume compartmentalization and isolation
– Separate the system into isolated compartments
– Limit interaction between compartments
• Principle of Least Privilege
– A system module should only have the minimal
privileges needed for its intended purposes

John Mitchell
 Monolithic design

Network Network

User input User device

System
File system File system

John Mitchell
 Monolithic design

Network Network

User input User device

System
File system File system

John Mitchell
 Monolithic design

Network Network

User input User display

System
File system File system

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 Component design

Network Network

User input User display

File system File system

John Mitchell
 Component design

Network Network

User input User device

File system File system

John Mitchell
 Component design

Network Network

User input User device

File system File system

John Mitchell
 Principle of Least Privilege
• What’s a privilege?
– Ability to access or modify a resource
• Assume compartmentalization and isolation
– Separate the system into isolated compartments
– Limit interaction between compartments
• Principle of Least Privilege
– A system module should only have the minimal
privileges needed for its intended purposes

John Mitchell
 Example: Mail Agent
• Requirements
– Receive and send email over external network
– Place incoming email into local user inbox files
• Sendmail
– Traditional Unix
– Monolithic design
– Historical source of many vulnerabilities
• Qmail
– Compartmentalized design
John Mitchell
 OS Basics (before examples)
• Isolation between processes
– Each process has a UID
• Two processes with same UID have same permissions
– A process may access files, network sockets, ….
• Permission granted according to UID
• Relation to previous terminology
– Compartment defined by UID
– Privileges defined by actions allowed on system resources

John Mitchell
 Qmail design
• Isolation based on OS isolation
– Separate modules run as separate “users”
– Each user only has access to specific resources
• Least privilege
– Minimal privileges for each UID
– Only one “setuid” program
• setuid allows a program to run as different users
– Only one “root” program
• root program has all privileges

John Mitchell
 Structure of qmail
qmail-smtpd qmail-inject

qmail-queue
Incoming external mail Incoming internal mail

qmail-send

qmail-rspawn qmail-lspawn

qmail-remote qmail-local
John Mitchell
 Isolation by Unix UIDs
qmailq – user who is allowed to read/write mail queue
qmaild
user
qmail-smtpd qmailq qmail-inject

qmail-queue

qmail-send
qmailr qmails root
qmail-rspawn qmail-lspawn

setuid user
qmailr user
qmail-remote qmail-local
John Mitchell
 Structure of qmail
qmail-smtpd qmail-inject

qmail-queue
Reads incoming mail directories
Splits message into header, body
Signals qmail-send
qmail-send

qmail-rspawn qmail-lspawn

qmail-remote qmail-local
John Mitchell
 Structure of qmail
qmail-smtpd qmail-inject

qmail-queue
qmail-send signals
• qmail-lspawn if local
• qmail-remote if remote qmail-send

qmail-rspawn qmail-lspawn

qmail-remote qmail-local
John Mitchell
 Structure of qmail
qmail-smtpd qmail-inject

qmail-queue

qmail-send

qmail-lspawn
qmail-lspawn
• Spawns qmail-local
• qmail-local runs with ID of user
receiving local mail qmail-local
John Mitchell
 Structure of qmail
qmail-smtpd qmail-inject

qmail-queue

qmail-send

qmail-lspawn
qmail-local
• Handles alias expansion
• Delivers local mail
• Calls qmail-queue if needed qmail-local
John Mitchell
 Structure of qmail
qmail-smtpd qmail-inject

qmail-queue

qmail-send

qmail-rspawn

qmail-remote
qmail-remote • Delivers message to remote MTA

John Mitchell
 Isolation by Unix UIDs
qmailq – user who is allowed to read/write mail queue
qmaild
user
qmail-smtpd qmailq qmail-inject

qmail-queue
setuid

qmail-send
qmailr qmails root root
qmail-rspawn qmail-lspawn

setuid user
qmailr user
qmail-remote qmail-local
John Mitchell
 Least privilege
qmail-smtpd qmail-inject

setuid qmail-queue

qmail-send

qmail-rspawn qmail-lspawn
root

qmail-remote qmail-local
John Mitchell
 Android process isolation
• Android application sandbox
– Isolation: Each application runs with its own UID in own VM
• Provides memory protection
• Communication limited to using Unix domain sockets
• Only ping, zygote (spawn another process) run as root
– Interaction: reference monitor checks permissions on inter-
component communication
– Least Privilege: Applications announces permission
• User grants access at install time
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John Mitchell
John Mitchell
Secure Architecture
Principles

Access Control
Concepts
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 Access control
• Assumptions
– System knows who the user is
• Authentication via name and password, other credential
– Access requests pass through gatekeeper (reference monitor)
• System must not allow monitor to be bypassed

Reference
monitor
User
process access request ? Resource

policy
John Mitchell
 Access control matrix [Lampson]
Objects

File 1 File 2 File 3 … File n

User 1 read write - - read

User 2 write write write - -

Subjects
User 3 - - - read read

User m read write read write read

John Mitchell
 Implementation concepts
File 1 File 2 …
• Access control list (ACL) User 1 read write -
– Store column of matrix
User 2 write write -
with the resource
User 3 - - read
• Capability
– User holds a “ticket” for …
each resource User m Read write write
– Two variations
• store row of matrix with user, under OS control
• unforgeable ticket in user space

Access control lists are widely used, often with groups

Some aspects of capability concept are used in many systems John Mitchell
 ACL vs Capabilities
• Access control list
– Associate list with each object
– Check user/group against list
– Relies on authentication: need to know user
• Capabilities
– Capability is unforgeable ticket
• Random bit sequence, or managed by OS
• Can be passed from one process to another
– Reference monitor checks ticket
• Does not need to know identify of user/process John Mitchell
 ACL vs Capabilities

User U Capabilty c,d,e

Process P Process P

User U Capabilty c,e

Process Q Process Q

User U Capabilty c
Process R Process R

John Mitchell
 ACL vs Capabilities
• Delegation
– Cap: Process can pass capability at run time
– ACL: Try to get owner to add permission to list?
• More common: let other process act under current user
• Revocation
– ACL: Remove user or group from list
– Cap: Try to get capability back from process?
• Possible in some systems if appropriate bookkeeping
– OS knows which data is capability
– If capability is used for multiple resources, have to revoke all or none …
• Indirection: capability points to pointer to resource
– If C  P  R, then revoke capability C by setting P=0
John Mitchell
 Roles (aka Groups)
• Role = set of users
– Administrator, PowerUser, User, Guest
– Assign permissions to roles; each user gets permission
• Role hierarchy
– Partial order of roles Administrator

– Each role gets PowerUser

permissions of roles below
User
– List only new permissions
given to each role Guest

John Mitchell
 Role-Based Access Control
Individuals Roles Resources

engineering Server 1

marketing Server 2

Server 3
human res

Advantage: users change more frequently than roles

John Mitchell
 Access control summary
• Access control involves reference monitor
– Check permissions: user info, action yes/no
– Important: no way around this check
• Access control matrix
– Access control lists vs capabilities
– Advantages and disadvantages of each
• Role-based access control
– Use group as “user info”; use group hierarchies

John Mitchell
Secure Architecture
Principles
Operating Systems

John Mitchell
 Unix access control
File 1 File 2 …
User 1 read write -
• Process has user id User 2 write write -
– Inherit from creating process User 3 - - read
– Process can change id …
• Restricted set of options User m Read write write
– Special “root” id
• All access allowed
• File has access control list (ACL)
– Grants permission to user ids
– Owner, group, other

John Mitchell
 Unix file access control list
• Each file has owner and group
• Permissions set by owner setid
– Read, write, execute
- rwx rwx rwx
– Owner, group, other
ownr grp othr
– Represented by vector of
four octal values
• Only owner, root can change permissions
– This privilege cannot be delegated or shared
• Setid bits – Discuss in a few slides

John Mitchell
 Process effective user id (EUID)
• Each process has three Ids (+ more under Linux)
– Real user ID (RUID)
• same as the user ID of parent (unless changed)
• used to determine which user started the process
– Effective user ID (EUID)
• from set user ID bit on the file being executed, or sys call
• determines the permissions for process
– file access and port binding
– Saved user ID (SUID)
• So previous EUID can be restored

• Real group ID, effective group ID, used similarly

John Mitchell
 Process Operations and IDs
• Root
– ID=0 for superuser root; can access any file
• Fork and Exec
– Inherit three IDs, except exec of file with setuid bit
• Setuid system call
– seteuid(newid) can set EUID to
• Real ID or saved ID, regardless of current EUID
• Any ID, if EUID=0

• Details are actually more complicated

– Several different calls: setuid, seteuid, setreuid John Mitchell
 Setid bits on executable Unix file
• Three setid bits
– Setuid – set EUID of process to ID of file owner
– Setgid – set EGID of process to GID of file
– Sticky
• Off: if user has write permission on directory, can
rename or remove files, even if not owner
• On: only file owner, directory owner, and root can
rename or remove file in the directory

John Mitchell
 Example
Owner 18
RUID 25 SetUID
…; program
…;
exec( );
Owner 18
-rw-r--r-- …;
read/write …; RUID 25
file EUID 18
i=getruid()
Owner 25 setuid(i);
-rw-r--r-- RUID 25
read/write …; EUID 25
file …;
John Mitchell
 Unix summary
• Good things
– Some protection from most users
– Flexible enough to make things possible
• Main limitation
– Too tempting to use root privileges
– No way to assume some root privileges without all root
privileges

John Mitchell
 Weakness in isolation, privileges
• Network-facing Daemons
– Root processes with network ports open to all remote parties, e.g.,
sshd, ftpd, sendmail, …
• Rootkits
– System extension via dynamically loaded kernel modules
• Environment Variables
– System variables such as LIBPATH that are shared state across
applications. An attacker can change LIBPATH to load an attacker-
provided file as a dynamic library

John Mitchell
 Weakness in isolation, privileges
• Shared Resources
– Since any process can create files in /tmp directory, an untrusted
process may create files that are used by arbitrary system processes
• Time-of-Check-to-Time-of-Use (TOCTTOU)
– Typically, a root process uses system call to determine if initiating user
has permission to a particular file, e.g. /tmp/X.
– After access is authorized and before the file open, user may change
the file /tmp/X to a symbolic link to a target file /etc/shadow.

John Mitchell
 Access control in Windows
• Some basic functionality similar to Unix
– Specify access for groups and users
• Read, modify, change owner, delete
• Some additional concepts
– Tokens
– Security attributes
• Generally
– More flexible than Unix
• Can define new permissions
• Can give some but not all administrator privileges John Mitchell
John Mitchell
 Identify subject using SID
• Security ID (SID)
– Identity (replaces UID)
• SID revision number
• 48-bit authority value
• variable number of Relative
Identifiers (RIDs), for
uniqueness
– Users, groups, computers,
domains, domain members all
have SIDs

John Mitchell
 Process has set of tokens
• Security context
– Privileges, accounts, and groups associated with the
process or thread
– Presented as set of tokens
• Impersonation token
– Used temporarily to adopt a different security context,
usually of another user
• Security Reference Monitor
– Uses tokens to identify the security context of a process or
thread John Mitchell
 Object has security descriptor
• Security descriptor associated with an object
– Specifies who can perform what actions on the object
• Several fields
– Header
• Descriptor revision number
• Control flags, attributes of the descriptor
– E.g., memory layout of the descriptor
– SID of the object's owner
– SID of the primary group of the object
– Two attached optional lists:
• Discretionary Access Control List (DACL) – users, groups, …
• System Access Control List (SACL) – system logs, ..
John Mitchell
 Example access request
Access token
User: Mark
Group1: Administrators Access request: write
Group2: Writers Action: denied

Revision Number • User Mark requests write permission

Control flags • Descriptor denies permission to group
Owner SID
Group SID • Reference Monitor denies request
DACL Pointer (DACL for access, SACL for audit and logging)
Security SACL Pointer
descriptor Deny Priority:
Writers Explicit Deny
Read, Write Explicit Allow
Allow
Mark Inherited Deny
Read, Write Inherited Allow
John Mitchell
John Mitchell
 Impersonation Tokens (compare to setuid)
• Process adopts security attributes of another
– Client passes impersonation token to server
• Client specifies impersonation level of server
– Anonymous
• Token has no information about the client
– Identification
• Obtain the SIDs of client and client's privileges, but server cannot
impersonate the client
– Impersonation
• Impersonate the client
– Delegation
• Lets server impersonate client on local, remote systems John Mitchell
 Weakness in isolation, privileges
• Similar problems to Unix
– E.g., Rootkits leveraging dynamically loaded kernel modules
• Windows Registry
– Global hierarchical database to store data for all programs
– Registry entry can be associated with a security context that
limits access; common to be able to write sensitive entry
• Enabled By Default
– Historically, many Windows deployments also came with full
permissions and functionality enabled

John Mitchell
Secure Architecture
Principles
Browser Isolation
and Least Privilege
John Mitchell
 Web browser: an analogy

Operating system Web browser

• Subject: Processes • Subject: web content (JavaScript)
– Has User ID (UID, SID) – Has “Origin”
– Discretionary access control – Mandatory access control
• Objects • Objects
– File – Document object model
– Network – Frames
– … – Cookies / localStorage
• Vulnerabilities • Vulnerabilities
– Untrusted programs – Cross-site scripting
– Buffer overflow – Implementation bugs
– … – …
The web browser enforces its own internal policy. If the browser
implementation is corrupted, this mechanism becomes unreliable .
John Mitchell
 Components of security policy
• Frame-Frame relationships
– canScript(A,B)
• Can Frame A execute a script that manipulates
arbitrary/nontrivial DOM elements of Frame B?
– canNavigate(A,B)
• Can Frame A change the origin of content for Frame B?
• Frame-principal relationships
– readCookie(A,S), writeCookie(A,S)
• Can Frame A read/write cookies from site S?
John Mitchell
 Chromium Security Architecture
• Browser ("kernel")
– Full privileges (file system,
networking)
• Rendering engine
– Up to 20 processes
– Sandboxed
• One process per plugin
– Full privileges of browser

John Mitchell
Chromium
Communicating sandboxed
components

See: http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/sandbox/ John Mitchell

 Design Decisions
• Compatibility
– Sites rely on the existing browser security policy
– Browser is only as useful as the sites it can render
– Rules out more “clean slate” approaches
• Black Box
– Only renderer may parse HTML, JavaScript, etc.
– Kernel enforces coarse-grained security policy
– Renderer to enforces finer-grained policy decisions
• Minimize User Decisions
John Mitchell
Task Allocation

John Mitchell
 Leverage OS Isolation
• Sandbox based on four OS mechanisms
– A restricted token
– The Windows job object
– The Windows desktop object
– Windows Vista only: integrity levels
• Specifically, the rendering engine
– adjusts security token by converting SIDS to DENY_ONLY, adding restricted
SID, and calling AdjustTokenPrivileges
– runs in a Windows Job Object, restricting ability to create new processes,
read or write clipboard, ..
– runs on a separate desktop, mitigating lax security checking of some
Windows APIs
See: http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/sandbox/ John Mitchell
 Evaluation: CVE count
• Total CVEs:

• Arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities:

John Mitchell
 Summary
• Security principles
– Isolation
– Principle of Least Privilege
– Qmail example
• Access Control Concepts
– Matrix, ACL, Capabilities
• OS Mechanisms
– Unix
• File system, Setuid
– Windows
• File system, Tokens, EFS
• Browser security architecture
– Isolation and least privilege example John Mitchell
 Announcement
Thursday lecture:
Alex Stamos, Yahoo! VP of Information Security (CISO) 
– He is taking time from his busy schedule to join us
– Please come to class, in person, show your appreciation!

John Mitchell