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This research considers a scenario in which a piece of software needs to be protected against an attacker (the man-at-the-end, MATE) who has physical access to the software and so is able to inspect, modify, and execute it. The goal is to prevent the attacker from extracting sensitive information from the software, to prevent him from making changes to the behavior of the software, or, at least, to detect and report when such attacks are underway.
Man-at-the-end attacks can have serious consequences. For example, on an individual scale they can violate the privacy and integrity of medical records and other sensitive personal data; on a larger scale, such attacks can cripple national infrastructure (such as the power grid and the Internet itself).
This project explores innovative approaches to protect distributed systems from MATE attacks. To accomplish comprehensive defenses, the project develops MATE attack models and security metrics that formally characterize the process of device compromise, provides attack tools to allow easy testing of defense algorithms, and devises community standards for defense evaluation. Rigorously defined security metrics are necessary for research outcomes to be compared to existing and future approaches. A primary goal of this research is therefore to develop evaluation procedures for MATE defense mechanisms. This includes both universal obfuscation metrics and detailed red-team exercise protocols.
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EAGER: Man-at-the-End Attacks: Defenses and Evaluation Techniques