Hi-Fi: collecting high-fidelity whole-system provenance

  • Authors:
  • Devin J. Pohly;Stephen McLaughlin;Patrick McDaniel;Kevin Butler

  • Affiliations:
  • Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA;Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA;Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA;University of Oregon, Eugene, OR

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 28th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

Data provenance---a record of the origin and evolution of data in a system---is a useful tool for forensic analysis. However, existing provenance collection mechanisms fail to achieve sufficient breadth or fidelity to provide a holistic view of a system's operation over time. We present Hi-Fi, a kernel-level provenance system which leverages the Linux Security Modules framework to collect high-fidelity whole-system provenance. We demonstrate that Hi-Fi is able to record a variety of malicious behavior within a compromised system. In addition, our benchmarks show the collection overhead from Hi-Fi to be less than 1% for most system calls and 3% in a representative workload, while simultaneously generating a system measurement that fully reflects system evolution. In this way, we show that we can collect broad, high-fidelity provenance data which is capable of supporting detailed forensic analysis.