Robusta: taming the native beast of the JVM

  • Authors:

  • Joseph Siefers;Gang Tan;Greg Morrisett

  • Affiliations:

  • Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA;Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA;Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer and communications security
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Java applications often need to incorporate native-code components for efficiency and for reusing legacy code. However, it is well known that the use of native code defeats Java's security model. We describe the design and implementation of Robusta, a complete framework that provides safety and security to native code in Java applications. Starting from software-based fault isolation (SFI), Robusta isolates native code into a sandbox where dynamic linking/loading of libraries in supported and unsafe system modification and confidentiality violations are prevented. It also mediates native system calls according to a security policy by connecting to Java's security manager. Our prototype implementation of Robusta is based onNative Client and OpenJDK. Experiments in this prototype demonstrate Robusta is effective and efficient, with modest runtime overhead on a set of JNI benchmark programs. Robusta can be used to sandbox native libraries used in Java's system classes to prevent attackers from exploiting bugs in the libraries. It can also enable trustworthy execution of mobile Java programs with native libraries. The design of Robusta should also be applicable when other type-safe languages (e.g., C#, Python) want to ensure safe interoperation with native libraries