Joel Weinberger

Bio: Joel Weinberger is an academic researcher from University of California, Berkeley. The author has contributed to research in topics: JavaScript & Web application. The author has an hindex of 8, co-authored 11 publications receiving 427 citations. Previous affiliations of Joel Weinberger include Google.

A systematic analysis of XSS sanitization in web application frameworks

Abstract: While most research on XSS defense has focused on techniques for securing existing applications and re-architecting browser mechanisms, sanitization remains the industry-standard defense mechanism. By streamlining and automating XSS sanitization, web application frameworks stand in a good position to stop XSS but have received little research attention. In order to drive research on web frameworks, we systematically study the security of the XSS sanitization abstractions frameworks provide. We develop a novel model of the web browser and characterize the challenges of XSS sanitization. Based on the model, we systematically evaluate the XSS abstractions in 14 major commercially-used web frameworks. We find that frameworks often do not address critical parts of the XSS conundrum. We perform an empirical analysis of 8 large web applications to extract the requirements of sanitization primitives from the perspective of realworld applications. Our study shows that there is a wide gap between the abstractions provided by frameworks and the requirements of applications.

Verifying higher-order programs with the dijkstra monad

Abstract: Modern programming languages, ranging from Haskell and ML, to JavaScript, C# and Java, all make extensive use of higher-order state. This paper advocates a new verification methodology for higher-order stateful programs, based on a new monad of predicate transformers called the Dijkstra monad.Using the Dijkstra monad has a number of benefits. First, the monad naturally yields a weakest pre-condition calculus. Second, the computed specifications are structurally simpler in several ways, e.g., single-state post-conditions are sufficient (rather than the more complex two-state post-conditions). Finally, the monad can easily be varied to handle features like exceptions and heap invariants, while retaining the same type inference algorithm.We implement the Dijkstra monad and its type inference algorithm for the F* programming language. Our most extensive case study evaluates the Dijkstra monad and its F* implementation by using it to verify JavaScript programs.Specifically, we describe a tool chain that translates programs in a subset of JavaScript decorated with assertions and loop invariants to F*. Once in F*, our type inference algorithm computes verification conditions and automatically discharges their proofs using an SMT solver. We use our tools to prove that a core model of the JavaScript runtime in F* respects various invariants and that a suite of JavaScript source programs are free of runtime errors.

Preventing Capability Leaks in Secure JavaScript Subsets.

Abstract: Publishers wish to sandbox third-party advertisements to protect themselves from malicious advertisements. One promising approach, used by ADsafe, Dojo Secure, and Jacaranda, sandboxes advertisements by statically verifying that their JavaScript conforms to a safe subset of the language. These systems blacklist known dangerous properties that would let advertisements escape the sandbox. Unfortunately, this approach does not prevent advertisements from accessing new methods added to the built-in prototype objects by the hosting page. In this paper, we show that onethird of the Alexa US Top 100 web sites would be exploitable by an ADsafe-verified advertisement. We propose an improved statically verified JavaScript subset that whitelists known-safe properties using namespaces. Our approach maintains the expressiveness and performance of static verification while improving security.

Cross-origin javascript capability leaks: detection, exploitation, and defense

Abstract: We identify a class of Web browser implementation vulnerabilities, cross-origin JavaScript capability leaks, which occur when the browser leaks a JavaScript pointer from one security origin to another. We devise an algorithm for detecting these vulnerabilities by monitoring the "points-to" relation of the JavaScript heap. Our algorithm finds a number of new vulnerabilities in the opensource WebKit browser engine used by Safari. We propose an approach to mitigate this class of vulnerabilities by adding access control checks to browser JavaScript engines. These access control checks are backwardscompatible because they do not alter semantics of the Web platform. Through an application of the inline cache, we implement these checks with an overhead of 1-2% on industry-standard benchmarks.

Towards client-side HTML security policies

Abstract: With the proliferation of content rich web applications, content injection has become an increasing problem. Cross site scripting is the most prominent examples of this. Many systems have been designed to mitigate content injection and cross site scripting. Notable examples are BEEP, BLUEPRINT, and Content Security Policy, which can be grouped as HTML security policies. We evaluate these systems, including the first empirical evaluation of Content Security Policy on real applications. We propose that HTML security policies should be the defense of choice in web applications going forward. We argue, however, that current systems are insufficient for the needs of web applications, and research needs to be done to determine the set of properties an HTML security policy system should have. We propose several ideas for research going forward in this area.

Permission re-delegation: attacks and defenses

Abstract: Modern browsers and smartphone operating systems treat applications as mutually untrusting, potentially malicious principals. Applications are (1) isolated except for explicit IPC or inter-application communication channels and (2) unprivileged by default, requiring user permission for additional privileges. Although inter-application communication supports useful collaboration, it also introduces the risk of permission redelegation. Permission re-delegation occurs when an application with permissions performs a privileged task for an application without permissions. This undermines the requirement that the user approve each application's access to privileged devices and data. We discuss permission re-delegation and demonstrate its risk by launching real-world attacks on Android system applications; several of the vulnerabilities have been confirmed as bugs. We discuss possible ways to address permission redelegation and present IPC Inspection, a new OS mechanism for defending against permission re-delegation. IPC Inspection prevents opportunities for permission redelegation by reducing an application's permissions after it receives communication from a less privileged application. We have implemented IPC Inspection for a browser and Android, and we show that it prevents the attacks we found in the Android system applications.

Dependent types and multi-monadic effects in F*

Abstract: We present a new, completely redesigned, version of F*, a language that works both as a proof assistant as well as a general-purpose, verification-oriented, effectful programming language. In support of these complementary roles, F* is a dependently typed, higher-order, call-by-value language with _primitive_ effects including state, exceptions, divergence and IO. Although primitive, programmers choose the granularity at which to specify effects by equipping each effect with a monadic, predicate transformer semantics. F* uses this to efficiently compute weakest preconditions and discharges the resulting proof obligations using a combination of SMT solving and manual proofs. Isolated from the effects, the core of F* is a language of pure functions used to write specifications and proof terms---its consistency is maintained by a semantic termination check based on a well-founded order. We evaluate our design on more than 55,000 lines of F* we have authored in the last year, focusing on three main case studies. Showcasing its use as a general-purpose programming language, F* is programmed (but not verified) in F*, and bootstraps in both OCaml and F#. Our experience confirms F*'s pay-as-you-go cost model: writing idiomatic ML-like code with no finer specifications imposes no user burden. As a verification-oriented language, our most significant evaluation of F* is in verifying several key modules in an implementation of the TLS-1.2 protocol standard. For the modules we considered, we are able to prove more properties, with fewer annotations using F* than in a prior verified implementation of TLS-1.2. Finally, as a proof assistant, we discuss our use of F* in mechanizing the metatheory of a range of lambda calculi, starting from the simply typed lambda calculus to System F-omega and even micro-F*, a sizeable fragment of F* itself---these proofs make essential use of F*'s flexible combination of SMT automation and constructive proofs, enabling a tactic-free style of programming and proving at a relatively large scale.

Knowing your enemy: understanding and detecting malicious web advertising

Abstract: With the Internet becoming the dominant channel for marketing and promotion, online advertisements are also increasingly used for illegal purposes such as propagating malware, scamming, click frauds, etc To understand the gravity of these malicious advertising activities, which we call malvertising, we perform a large-scale study through analyzing ad-related Web traces crawled over a three-month period Our study reveals the rampancy of malvertising: hundreds of top ranking Web sites fell victims and leading ad networks such as DoubleClick were infiltratedTo mitigate this threat, we identify prominent features from malicious advertising nodes and their related content delivery paths, and leverage them to build a new detection system called MadTracer MadTracer automatically generates detection rules and utilizes them to inspect advertisement delivery processes and detect malvertising activities Our evaluation shows that MadTracer was capable of capturing a large number of malvertising cases, 15 times as many as Google Safe Browsing and Microsoft Forefront did together, at a low false detection rate It also detected new attacks, including a type of click-fraud attack that has never been reported before

ConScript: Specifying and Enforcing Fine-Grained Security Policies for JavaScript in the Browser

Abstract: Much of the power of modern Web comes from the ability of a Web page to combine content and JavaScript code from disparate servers on the same page. While the ability to create such mash-ups is attractive for both the user and the developer because of extra functionality, code inclusion effectively opens the hosting site up for attacks and poor programming practices within every JavaScript library or API it chooses to use. In other words, expressiveness comes at the price of losing control. To regain the control, it is therefore valuable to provide means for the hosting page to restrict the behavior of the code that the page may include. This paper presents ConScript, a client-side advice implementation for security, built on top of Internet Explorer 8. ConScript allows the hosting page to express fine-grained application-specific security policies that are enforced at runtime. In addition to presenting 17 widely-ranging security and reliability policies that ConScript enables, we also show how policies can be generated automatically through static analysis of server-side code or runtime analysis of client-side code. We also present a type system that helps ensure correctness of ConScript policies. To show the practicality of ConScript in a range of settings, we compare the overhead of ConScript enforcement and conclude that it is significantly lower than that of other systems proposed in the literature, both on micro-benchmarks as well as large, widely-used applications such as MSN, GMail, Google Maps, and Live Desktop.

Secure distributed programming with value-dependent types

Abstract: Distributed applications are difficult to program reliably and securely. Dependently typed functional languages promise to prevent broad classes of errors and vulnerabilities, and to enable program verification to proceed side-by-side with development. However, as recursion, effects, and rich libraries are added, using types to reason about programs, specifications, and proofs becomes challenging.We present F*, a full-fledged design and implementation of a new dependently typed language for secure distributed programming. Unlike prior languages, F* provides arbitrary recursion while maintaining a logically consistent core; it enables modular reasoning about state and other effects using affine types; and it supports proofs of refinement properties using a mixture of cryptographic evidence and logical proof terms. The key mechanism is a new kind system that tracks several sub-languages within F* and controls their interaction. F* subsumes two previous languages, F7 and Fine. We prove type soundness (with proofs mechanized in Coq) and logical consistency for F*.We have implemented a compiler that translates F* to .NET bytecode, based on a prototype for Fine. F* provides access to libraries for concurrency, networking, cryptography, and interoperability with C#, F#, and the other .NET languages. The compiler produces verifiable binaries with 60% code size overhead for proofs and types, as much as a 45x improvement over the Fine compiler, while still enabling efficient bytecode verification.To date, we have programmed and verified more than 20,000 lines of F* including (1) new schemes for multi-party sessions; (2) a zero-knowledge privacy-preserving payment protocol; (3) a provenance-aware curated database; (4) a suite of 17 web-browser extensions verified for authorization properties; and (5) a cloud-hosted multi-tier web application with a verified reference monitor.