Protecting sensitive web content from client-side vulnerabilities with CRYPTONS

  • Authors:
  • Xinshu Dong;Zhaofeng Chen;Hossein Siadati;Shruti Tople;Prateek Saxena;Zhenkai Liang

  • Affiliations:
  • National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore;Peking University, Beijing, China;Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Brooklyn, USA;National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore;National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore;National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2013 ACM SIGSAC conference on Computer & communications security
  • Year:
  • 2013

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Web browsers isolate web origins, but do not provide direct abstractions to isolate sensitive data and control computation over it within the same origin. As a result, guaranteeing security of sensitive web content requires trusting all code in the browser and client-side applications to be vulnerability-free. In this paper, we propose a new abstraction, called Crypton, which supports intra-origin control over sensitive data throughout its life cycle. To securely enforce the semantics of Cryptons, we develop a standalone component called Crypton-Kernel, which extensively leverages the functionality of existing web browsers without relying on their large TCB. Our evaluation demonstrates that the Crypton abstraction supported by the Crypton-Kernel is widely applicable to popular real-world applications with millions of users, including webmail, chat, blog applications, and Alexa Top 50 websites, with low performance overhead.