TALISMAN: Tamper Analysis for Reference Monitors
Frank Capobianco
Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2024 · Day 3 · Systems & Containers
In this presentation, Frank Capobianco introduced **TALISMAN**, an automated analysis tool designed to detect subtle yet critical flaws that can compromise the tamper-proofing of **reference monitor** implementations. While the concept of a reference monitor—a security component that mediates all access to sensitive resources—has been a cornerstone of system security since the 1970s, prior research has predominantly focused on ensuring *complete mediation*, meaning all security-sensitive operations are checked. The equally vital requirement of the reference monitor itself being *tamperproof* has largely been overlooked, often with the assumption that a flaw in the host program was indistinguishable from one in the monitor.