Isolation Techniques for Untrusted Software
Navy SBIR FY2010.2


Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2010.2
Topic No.: N102-184
Topic Title: Isolation Techniques for Untrusted Software
Proposal No.: N102-184-1298
Firm: PRO-telligent LLC
1225 South Clark Street
Suite 1100
Arlington, Virginia 22202
Contact: Louis Testa
Phone: (503) 524-4557
Web Site: www.pro-telligent.com
Abstract: Open source software is built through collaboration and sharing by a large community of programmers and has wide acceptance in industry and government. Open source software provides considerable benefits of cost and technical innovation which can be prohibitive to duplicate. Unfortunately, open source software used in an embedded system could contain hidden malware which could be activated by triggers to the detriment of a warfighter. PRO-telligent proposes isolating untrusted software in guarded virtual machines. The virtual machine guard will be based on recent extrusion detection research which asserts that process activity occurring independent of human activity on the computer/system is suspect. The guard would be designed using virtual machine introspection to make the guard secure and fast. We believe this approach will protect the warfighter against the potential of embedded malware.
Benefits: 1. Improve security for embedded systems built with untrusted software 2. Provide low cost VM based software solution will be straightforward to implement, even on existing systems. 3. Offer potential to capture forensic data on an untrusted software attack 4. Provide lightweight solution will have minimal impact on the embedded system during normal operation.

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