FirePatch: Secure and time-critical dissemination of software patches

Abstract

Because software security patches contain information about vulnerabilities, they can be reverse engineered into exploits. Tools for doing this already exist. As a result, there is a race between hackers and end-users to obtain patches first. In this paper we present and evaluate FirePatch, an intrusion-tolerant dissemination mechanism that combines encryption, replication, and sandboxing such that end-users are able to win the security patch race. © 2007 International Federation for Information Processing.