Blinder: Partition-Oblivious Hierarchical Scheduling

Authors: 

Man-Ki Yoon, Mengqi Liu, Hao Chen, Jung-Eun Kim, and Zhong Shao, Yale University

Abstract: 

Hierarchical scheduling enables modular reasoning about the temporal behavior of individual applications by partitioning CPU time and thus isolating potential misbehavior. However, conventional time-partitioning mechanisms fail to achieve strong temporal isolation from a security perspective; variations in the executions of partitions can be perceived by others, which enables an algorithmic covert timing-channel between partitions that are completely isolated from each other in the utilization of time. Thus, we present a run-time algorithm that makes partitions oblivious to others' varying behaviors even when an adversary has full control over their timings. It enables the use of dynamic time-partitioning mechanisms that provide improved responsiveness, while guaranteeing the algorithmic-level non-interference that static approaches would achieve. From an implementation on an open-source operating system, we evaluate the costs of the solution in terms of the responsiveness as well as scheduling overhead.

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BibTeX
@inproceedings {263864,
author = {Man-Ki Yoon and Mengqi Liu and Hao Chen and Jung-Eun Kim and Zhong Shao},
title = {Blinder: {Partition-Oblivious} Hierarchical Scheduling},
booktitle = {30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 21)},
year = {2021},
isbn = {978-1-939133-24-3},
pages = {2417--2434},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity21/presentation/yoon},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = aug
}

Presentation Video