Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Weidong Cui

Marcus Peinado

Ben Niu

David Alexander Molnar

Xinyang Ge

Ling Tony Chen

Jiahe Helen Wang

Brendan Dolan-Gavitt

Kenneth Dean Johnson

Jason Lin

Gregory John Colombo

Alastair Wolman

Oliver H Foehr

Stefan Saroiu

Jacob Rubin Lorch

Jack Wilson Stokes, Iii

Benjamin Livshits

Ronnie Chaiken

John J Lambert

Bryan Jeffrey Parno

Luis Irun-Briz

Andrey Marochko

Tim William Burrell

Martim Carbone

Ruoyu Wang

Insu Yun

Baris Can Cengiz Kasikci

Christopher Stephen Frederick Smowton

Qingyun Liu

Karl Chen

Michael E Locasto

Zhilei Xu

Jayanthkumar Kannan

Ian Hellen

Robert James Mead

This disclosure describes systems and methods for protecting commercial off-the-shelf software program code from piracy. A software program may include an executable file. The executable file may include code and data. A platform may modify the executable file such that the data may be placed at a location in memory not based on a fixed distance from the code. The platform may modify the executable file to indicate that the code should be loaded in a hardware enclave and at least a portion of the data should be loaded in the memory outside the hardware enclave. The platform may encrypt the code and provide it to a computing device.

Protecting commercial off-the-shelf program binaries from piracy using hardware enclaves

This disclosure describes systems and methods for protecting commercial off-the-shelf software program code from piracy. A software program may include an executable file having code and data. A platform may modify the executable file such that the data may be placed at a location in memory that is an arbitrary distance from the code. The platform may modify the executable file to include a separation header. The separation header may indicate that the data can be placed at an arbitrary distance in the memory from the code. The separation header may indicate that the code should be loaded into a hardware enclave and that the data should be loaded outside of the hardware enclave. The platform may encrypt the code and provide it to a computing device. The computing device may load the encrypted code into the hardware enclave but load the data into memory outside the hardware enclave.

A program is executed using a call stack and shadow stack. The call stack includes frames having respective return addresses. The frames may also store variables and/or parameters. The shadow stack stores duplicates of the return addresses in the call stack. The call stack and the shadow stack are maintained by, (i) each time a function is called, adding a corresponding stack frame to the call stack and adding a corresponding return address to the shadow stack, and (ii) each time a function is exited, removing a corresponding frame from the call stack and removing a corresponding return address from the shadow stack. A backtrace of the program's current call chain is generated by accessing the return addresses in the shadow stack. The outputted backtrace includes the return addresses from the shadow stack and/or information about the traced functions that is derived from the shadow stack's return addresses.

Stack traces using shadow stack

This disclosure describes systems and methods for protecting commercial off-the-shelf software program code from piracy. A software program may include multiple image files having code and data. A platform may modify the executable file such that the data may be placed at a location in memory that is an arbitrary distance from the code. The platform may encrypt the code and provide it to a computing device comprising a hardware enclave. The computing device may load the encrypted code into the hardware enclave but load the data into memory outside the hardware enclave. The computing device may request a decryption key from an authentication server using a hash of the hardware enclave signed by a processor. The authentication server may provide the decryption key if it verifies the signature and the hash. The computing device may decrypt the code and mark the hardware enclave as non-readable.

Debugging systems are configured to resolve both memory aliasing conditions in which a write instruction is directed to an unknown destination address, and concurrency conditions in which control flow information is collected for multiple, concurrently executing threads. Recorded state values corresponding to an application's prior execution and control flow information are both obtained.

Reverse debugging of software failures

Graph-based detection systems and techniques are provided to identify potential malicious lateral movement paths. System and security events may be used to generate a network connection graph and detect remote file executions and/or other detections, for use in tracking malicious lateral movement across a computer network, such as a compromised computer network. Lateral movement determination across a computer network may be divided into two subproblems: forensic analysis and general detection. With forensic analysis, given a malicious node, possible lateral movement leading into or out of the node is identified. General detection identifies previously unknown malicious lateral movement on a network using a remote file execution detector, and/or other detectors, and a rare path anomaly detection algorithm.

Detecting malicious lateral movement across a computer network

Methods and systems for application monitoring through collective record and replay are disclosed herein. The method includes recording a number of execution traces for an application from a number of user devices at a runtime library, wherein the number of execution traces relates to non-deterministic data. The method also includes replaying the number of execution traces to determine whether a behavior of the application creates a security risk.

Application monitoring through collective record and replay

A system described herein includes a receiver component that receives source code from a computer-readable medium of a computing device and a static analysis component that executes a points-to analysis algorithm over the source code to cause generation of a points-to graph, wherein the points-to graph is a directed graph that comprises a plurality of nodes and a plurality of edges, wherein nodes of the points-to graph represent pointers in the source code and edges represent inclusion relationships in the source code. The system also includes an inference component that infers target types for generic pointers in the source code based at least in part upon known type definitions and global variables in the source code.

Determining target types for generic pointers in source code

Described is a technology by which the identity of a person (e.g., a customer in a commercial transaction) is determinable without active identification effort, via biometric data is obtained without action by the person. Machine processing of the biometric data over a set of possible persons, determined from secondary proximity sensing, is used to determine or assist in determining the identity of the person.

Personal identification combining proximity sensing with biometrics

A method, system, and computer-readable storage medium for application monitoring through continuous record and replay are described herein. The method includes continuously recording execution traces including external non-deterministic input data for an application at a user device and analyzing the recorded execution traces to identify relevant execution traces for determining a behavior of the application. The method also includes reporting the relevant execution traces to a server, wherein the server is configured to replay the relevant execution traces to determine whether the behavior of the application is as expected.

Application monitoring through continuous record and replay

Systems and methods for automatically reverse engineering an input data format using dynamic data flow analysis. Combining input data with a simulated execution of the binary program using the input data and analyzing the use of the data by the program to generate a BNL-like grammar representing the input data format. The input data can be application level protocols, network protocols or formatted files.

Automatic reverse engineering of input formats

The claimed subject matter provides a system and/or method that generates data patches for vulnerabilities. The system can include devices and components that examine exploits received or obtained from data streams, constructs probes and determines whether the probes take advantage of vulnerabilities. Based at least in part on such determinations data patches are dynamically generated to remedy the hitherto vulnerabilities.

Automatic data patch generation for unknown vulnerabilities

A 'Demand-Driven Pointer Analyzer' (DDPA) provides a 'demand-driven' field-sensitive pointer analysis process. This process rapidly and accurately identifies alias sets for selected pointers in software modules or programs of any size, including large-scale C/C++ programs such as a complete operating system (OS). The DDPA formulates the pointer analysis task as a Context-Free Language (CFL) reachability problem that operates using a Program Expression Graph (PEG) automatically constructed from the program code. The PEG provides a node and edge-based graph representation of all expressions and assignments in the program and allows the DDPA to rapidly identify aliases for pointers in the program by traversing the graph as a CFL reachability problem to determine pointer alias sets. In various embodiments, the DDPA is also context-sensitive.

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Weidong Cui