Title
Cozilet: Transparent Encapsulation to Prevent Abuse of Trusted Applets
Abstract
We have developed a mechanism which prevents abuse of trusted Java applets, such as digitally signed applets. A signed applet is usually permitted by a user to perform certain functions. However, an attacker may improperly recompose the signed applet to include malicious components and harm the user by abusing such functions of a signed applet. In this paper, we call this a malicious recomposition attack and propose an innovative mechanism to solve the problem of such attacks. Before deployment, a target signed applet is encapsulated into a special signed applet, called a cozilet, in an indecomposable format. On its execution, the cozilet isolates the classes and resources of the encapsulated applet by assigning a special class loader unique to the applet. It also enforces applet-document binding so that it is never executed from untrusted HTML documents. The mechanism is easily applicable to target signed applets because it is transparent not only to target applets, but also to current Java VM implementations. Therefore, the mechanism can easily protect both applets developed in the future and the applets currently in use. We have implemented this mechanism for Sun Java VM. In this paper, we describe its basic architecture and implementation details.
Year
DOI
Venue
2004
10.1109/CSAC.2004.13
ACSAC
Keywords
Field
DocType
current java vm implementation,signed applet,malicious recomposition attack,java applets,prevent abuse,sun java vm,special signed applet,innovative mechanism,trusted applets,transparent encapsulation,malicious component,special class loader,encapsulated applet,virtual machines,java applet,java
Virtual machine,Computer science,Computer security,Digital signature,Implementation,Loader,Java applet,Encapsulation (computer programming),Java,Operating system
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
1063-9527
0-7695-2252-1
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.37
3
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Hisashi Kojima121.06
Ikuya Morikawa231.07
Yuko Nakayama310.37
Yuji Yamaoka494.63