Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Manuel Silverio Da Silva Costa

Kapil Vaswani

Miguel Oom Temudo De Castro

Mark Eugene Russinovich

Richard John Black

Hervey O Wilson

Kenneth Dean Johnson

Kahren Tevosyan

Sylvan Wesley Clebsch

Matthew Ryan Miller

Matthew John Parkinson

Dimitrios Vytiniotis

Timothy William Burrell

Cédric Alain Marie Christophe Fournet

Antoine Jean Denis Delignat-lavaud

Christian Priebe

Albert Gordon Greenberg

Sharad Agarwal

Venkata N Padmanabhan

Peter Bernard Key

Antony Rowstron

Behrooz Chitsaz

Parantap Lahiri

Olga Ohrimenko

Felix Schuster

Istvan Haller

Julian Lettner

Piyus Kumar Kedia

Najam Ahmad

Daniel Gruss

Various technologies described herein pertain to enforcing control flow integrity by adding instrumentation when source code is compiled or binary code is rewritten. An indirect call to a control transfer target (e.g., in the source code, in the binary code, etc.) can be identified. Moreover, the instrumentation can be inserted prior to the indirect call. The instrumentation can use a bit from a bitmap maintained by a runtime to verify whether the control transfer target is valid. When an executable image that includes the inserted instrumentation runs, execution can be terminated and/or other appropriate actions can be taken when the control transfer target is determined to be invalid; alternatively, execution can continue when the control transfer target is determined to be valid.

Control flow integrity enforcement at scale

The disclosed technology is generally directed to code transparency. In one example of the technology, a claim associated with an application is received. The claim is a document that is signed with a claim signature and that includes evidence associated with a policy, and further includes an expected set of at least one binary measurement associated with the application. The evidence is cryptographically verifiable evidence associated with the application. A trusted execution environment (TEE) is used to provide a distributed ledger. The claim is verified. Verifying the claim includes verifying the expected set of at least one binary measurement associated with the application, verifying the claim signature, and, based at least on the evidence, verifying that the application meets the policy. Upon successful verification of the claim, the claim is appended to the distributed ledger. A ledger countersignature associated with the claim is generated.

Code transparency system operation

The disclosed technology is generally directed to code transparency. In one example of the technology, evidence associated with a policy is obtained. The evidence includes data that includes cryptographically verifiable evidence associated with initial source code in accordance with the policy. The initial source code is source code for a CTS. The initial binary is based on the initial source code is executed in a TEE such that a CTS instance begins operation. The CTS instance is configured to register guarantee(s) associated with code approved by the CTS instance. The TEE is used to provide a ledger. The evidence is stored on the ledger. Measurement(s) associated with the binary are provided. A service key associated with CTS instance is generated. TEE attestation of the measurement(s), the evidence, and the service key is provided.

Bootstrapping a code transparency system

In various examples, there is provided a computer-implemented method for writing transaction log entries to a transaction log for a database system. At least part of the database system is configured to be executed within a trusted execution environment. The transaction log is stored outside of the trusted execution environment. The method maintains a first secure count representing a number of transaction log entries which have been written to the transaction log for transactions which have been committed to the database and writes a transaction log entry to the transaction log. In other examples, there is also provided is a computer-implemented method for restoring a database system using transaction log entries received from the transaction log and a current value of the first secure count.

Database transaction log writing and integrity checking

In various examples, there is a database system which comprises an operating system, a query engine, a transaction manager and components implementing database administration functionality. The query engine and the transaction manager are configured to be executed within one or more memory enclaves of a host computer system separately from the operating system and the components implementing database administration functionality.

Database system

A method of manual memory management is described which comprises enabling one or more threads to access an object created in a manual heap by storing a reference to the object in thread-local state and subsequently deleting the stored reference after accessing the object. In response to abandonment of the object, an identifier for the object and a current value of either a local counter of a thread or a global counter are stored in a delete queue and all threads are prevented from storing any further references to the object in thread-local state. Deallocation of the object only occurs when all references to the object stored in thread-local state for any threads have been deleted and a current value of the local counter for the thread or the global counter has incremented to a value that is at least a pre-defined amount more than the stored value, wherein the global counter is updated using one or more local counters.

Safe manual memory management

In various examples a compute node is described. The compute node has a central processing unit which implements a hardware transactional memory using at least one cache of the central processing unit. The compute node has a memory in communication with the central processing unit, the memory storing information comprising at least one of: code and data. The compute node has a processor which loads at least part of the information, from the memory into the cache. The processor executes transactions using the hardware transactional memory and at least the loaded information, such that the processor ensures that the loaded information remains in the cache until completion of the execution.

Compute node security

A method of manual memory management is described. In response to detecting an access violation triggered by the use of an invalid reference to an object in a manual heap, a source of the access in a register or stack is identified. An updated reference for the object using stored mapping data is determined and used to replace the invalid reference in the source.

Manual memory management using lazy patching

An intelligent lookup service for a network is provided for clients of a network requesting services of the network that intelligently determines, based on a service requirement of the requested service, optimal service endpoint(s) for providing the requested service. The intelligent lookup service can incorporate predetermined mapping policy and traffic measurements into the determination. In addition, a feedback loop is provided from clients and/or service endpoints to the lookup service concerning measurements about prior connections in the network. The lookup service can include a set of beacons distributed in the network and against which measurements about the network are recorded. A client receives, from the lookup service in response to a request for a network address, a set of candidate service endpoints that pertain to the requested network address and the client connects to one of the candidate service endpoints based on policy or context.

Intelligent network address lookup service

Substantially accurate estimation of coordinates of a subject network node in a coordinate space is accomplished by considering designated coordinates of other positioned nodes within the network. The designation of coordinates in the coordinate space to such nodes allows the computation of predicted coordinate distances between two network nodes based on the coordinates. By optimizing the network distance errors between measured distances and predicted coordinate distances, the predicted coordinates of a subject node joining the network can be iteratively refined. With these estimated coordinates, the coordinate distance between two points in the space may be computed as a prediction of the network distance between the two corresponding nodes. Furthermore, coordinate-based coordinate estimation lends itself to security precautions to protect against malicious reference nodes or external interference.

Practical network node coordinate estimation

Growing community of inventors

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Manuel Silverio Da Silva Costa