Tracking information flow in dynamic tree structures

  • Authors:
  • Alejandro Russo;Andrei Sabelfeld;Andrey Chudnov

  • Affiliations:
  • Chalmers University of Technology;Chalmers University of Technology;Stevens Institute of Technology

  • Venue:
  • ESORICS'09 Proceedings of the 14th European conference on Research in computer security
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

This paper explores the problem of tracking information flow in dynamic tree structures. Motivated by the problem of manipulating the Document Object Model (DOM) trees by browser-run client-side scripts, we address the dynamic nature of interactions via tree structures. We present a runtime enforcement mechanism that monitors this interaction and prevents a range of attacks, some of them missed by previous approaches, that exploit the tree structure in order to transfer sensitive information. We formalize our approach for a simple language with DOM-like tree operations and show that the monitor prevents scripts from disclosing secrets.