Securing Network Input via a Trusted Input Proxy

2nd USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Security

Kevin Borders ; Atul Prakash

PID  :  81301

来源: CEUR

【 摘 要 】

The increasing popularity of online transactions involving sensitive personal data, such as bank account and socialsecurity numbers, has created a huge security problem for today’s computer users. Malicious software (malware)that steals passwords and other critical user input has led to countless cases of identity theft and financial fraud. Cli ent computers remain susceptible to key logging attacks due to inadequate defense against driveby malware instal lation. Trusted browsing virtual machines attempt to mitigate this problem, but fail to protect against many runtimeand Trojan horse malware attacks. One option for securely acquiring sensitive input is TPMverified trusted execu tion. While this method promises to provide the best security, it has serious usability limitations and would requireextensive modifications to both the client and the server.We propose a new approach for securing network input that relies on a Trusted Input Proxy (TIP). The TIP runs asa module in a virtual machine architecture that proxies secure network connections. When a user wishes to entersensitive data, he or she presses an escape sequence that triggers the TIP to display a secure input dialog. The TIP