Jaeho Lee (Rice University), Ang Chen (Rice University), Dan S. Wallach (Rice University)

A good security practice for handling sensitive data, such as passwords, is to overwrite the data buffers with zeros once the data is no longer in use. This protects against attackers who gain a snapshot of a device’s physical memory, whether by in- person physical attacks, or by remote attacks like Meltdown and Spectre. This paper looks at unnecessary password retention in Android phones by popular apps, secure password management apps, and even the lockscreen system process. We have performed a comprehensive analysis of the Android framework and a variety of apps, and discovered that passwords can survive in a variety of locations, including UI widgets where users enter their passwords, apps that retain passwords rather than exchange them for tokens, old copies not yet reused by garbage collectors, and buffers in keyboard apps. We have developed solutions that successfully fix these problems with modest code changes.

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Automating Patching of Vulnerable Open-Source Software Versions in Application...

Ruian Duan (Georgia Institute of Technology), Ashish Bijlani (Georgia Institute of Technology), Yang Ji (Georgia Institute of Technology), Omar Alrawi (Georgia Institute of Technology), Yiyuan Xiong (Peking University), Moses Ike (Georgia Institute of Technology), Brendan Saltaformaggio (Georgia Institute of Technology), Wenke Lee (Georgia Institute of Technology)

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The use of TLS in Censorship Circumvention

Sergey Frolov (University of Colorado Boulder), Eric Wustrow (University of Colorado Boulder)

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CRCount: Pointer Invalidation with Reference Counting to Mitigate Use-after-free...

Jangseop Shin (Seoul National University and Inter-University Semiconductor Research Center), Donghyun Kwon (Seoul National University and Inter-University Semiconductor Research Center), Jiwon Seo (Seoul National University and Inter-University Semiconductor Research Center), Yeongpil Cho (Soongsil University), Yunheung Paek (Seoul National University and Inter-University Semiconductor Research Center)

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Countering Malicious Processes with Process-DNS Association

Suphannee Sivakorn (Columbia University), Kangkook Jee (NEC Labs America), Yixin Sun (Princeton University), Lauri Korts-Pärn (Cyber Defense Institute), Zhichun Li (NEC Labs America), Cristian Lumezanu (NEC Labs America), Zhenyu Wu (NEC Labs America), Lu-An Tang (NEC Labs America), Ding Li (NEC Labs America)

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