AUTHORS: Yongsuk Lee, Gyungho Lee

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ABSTRACT: Dictating program control-flow transfers to be within a reference control-flow graph (CFG) can make a sound software protection. Control flow confinement (CFC) is to ensure the program execution to follow the reference of a control flow graph (CFG) obtained via profiled execution traces with various input data sets. CFC allows only the tested and expected control flows in program execution. This paper gauges the prospect of the CFC in practice by investigating how many unique control flow transfer instances there are in the execution profiles of various applications including popular sever programs and embedded routines. The profiled execution traces with various input data sets show that the number of unique control flow transfer instances are surprisingly low, which suggest that confining the program control flow within the set of the unique control flow transfers is feasible in practice. With the CFC, software behavior would be within the expected behavior space, avoiding unexpected mis-behavior, which leads to more dependable and secure environment for IoT (Internet of Things) and CPS (Cyber Physical System).

KEYWORDS: Cyber Physical Systems, Dependability, Internet of Things, Software Security

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