Publication Date
2023
Document Type
Thesis
Committee Members
Junjie Zhang, Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Lingwei Chen, Ph.D. (Committee Member); Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Degree Name
Master of Science in Cyber Security (M.S.C.S.)
Abstract
Deploying Mandatory Access Controls (MAC) is a popular way to provide host protection against malware. Unfortunately, current implementations lack the flexibility to adapt to emergent malware threats and are known for being difficult to configure. A core tenet of MAC security systems is that the policies they are deployed with are immutable from the host while they are active. This work looks at deploying a MAC system that leverages using encrypted security tokens to allow for redeploying policy configurations in real-time without the need to stop a running process. This is instrumental in developing an adaptive framework for security systems with a Zero Trust based approach to process authentication. This work also develops Path-Safe, a MAC security system that focuses on protecting filesystem access from unauthorized processes and malware. We show that our security system can mitigate real-world malware threats with low overhead and high accuracy.
Page Count
62
Department or Program
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Year Degree Awarded
2023
Copyright
Copyright 2023, some rights reserved. My ETD may be copied and distributed only for non-commercial purposes and may not be modified. All use must give me credit as the original author.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
ORCID ID
0000-0001-8943-5067
