Research Frontiers for Moving Target Defenses

Abstract

New software security threats are constantly arising, including new classes of attacks such as the recent spate of micro-architectural vulnerabilities, from side-channels and speculative execution to attacks like Rowhammer that alter the physical state of memory. At the same time, new defensive technologies are proposed and adopted, including advancements in programming languages and novel hardware architectures with a focus on security. Moving target defenses were developed to provide performant, incremental security to programs written in unsafe languages running on processors designed solely for performance. Here we examine the challenges and opportunities for moving target defenses in the evolving security landscape, and in new applications domains such as cloud computing and real-time systems.