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DACET: Data Acquisition through Compositional Executable Transformations

Award Information

Agency:
Department of Defense 		Branch:
N/A 		Award ID:
 Program Year/Program:
2011 / SBIR
Agency Tracking Number:
N111-081-0610 		Solicitation Year:
2011 		Solicitation Topic Code:
N111-081 		Solicitation Number:
2011.1
Small Business Information
Galois, Inc.
421 SW Sixth Suite 300 Portland, OR -
View profile »
Woman-Owned: No
Minority-Owned: No
HUBZone-Owned: No
 
Phase 1
Fiscal Year: 2011
Title: DACET: Data Acquisition through Compositional Executable Transformations
Agency: DOD
Contract: N00014-11-M-0242
Award Amount: $79,770.00
 

Abstract:

Low-overhead, real-time data acquisition of executing software is the last line of defense against malicious cyber attacks. A monitoring approach cannot depend on access to source code, as the code may be proprietary and recompilation is too time-intensive. Rather, we propose to monitor the binary executables themselves. Our solution is called DACET: Data Acquisition through Compositional Executable Transformations. DACET is a framework for composing monitoring specifications. DACET instruments binaries at load-time (or earlier) with monitors. The monitors are specified by a monitoring policy. A novel aspect of DACET is that it transforms binaries into LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine) code, a high-level typed architecture-independent assembly language. The monitors are instrumented into the LLVM, and then machine code is re-generated. LLVM already has associated with it numerous open-source static and dynamic analysis tools and generates highly-optimized machine code. Furthermore, DACET will include a static execution time predictor to help the user determine the performance penalty of implementing the monitoring policy. DACET is a software-only tool with no hardware dependencies but can be made more efficient with hardware extensions.

Principal Investigator:

Mark Tullsen
Principle Investigator
(503) 626-6616
tullsen@galois.com

Business Contact:

Jodee LeRoux
Contracts
(503) 808-7209
jodee@galois.com
Small Business Information at Submission:

Galois, Inc.
421 SW Sixth Suite 300 Portland, OR -

EIN/Tax ID: 931278540
DUNS: N/A
Number of Employees:
Woman-Owned: No
Minority-Owned: No
HUBZone-Owned: No