TY - GEN
T1 - Application-replay attack on Java cards
T2 - 4th International Symposium on Engineering Secure Software and Systems, ESSoS 2012
AU - Barbu, Guillaume
AU - Hoogvorst, Philippe
AU - Duc, Guillaume
PY - 2012/2/27
Y1 - 2012/2/27
N2 - Java Card 3.0 specifications have brought many new features in the Java Card world, amongst which a true garbage collection mechanism. In this paper, we show how one could use this specific feature to predict the references that will be assigned to object instances to be created. We also exploit this reference prediction process in a combined attack. This attack stands as a kind of "application replay" attack, taking advantage of an unspecified behavior of the Java Card Runtime Environment (JCRE) on application instance deletion. It reveals quite powerful, since it potentially permits the attacker to circumvent the application firewall: a fundamental and historical Java Card security mechanism. Finally, we point out that this breach comes from the latest specification update and more precisely from the introduction of the automatic garbage collection mechanism, which leads to a straightforward countermeasure to the exposed attack.
AB - Java Card 3.0 specifications have brought many new features in the Java Card world, amongst which a true garbage collection mechanism. In this paper, we show how one could use this specific feature to predict the references that will be assigned to object instances to be created. We also exploit this reference prediction process in a combined attack. This attack stands as a kind of "application replay" attack, taking advantage of an unspecified behavior of the Java Card Runtime Environment (JCRE) on application instance deletion. It reveals quite powerful, since it potentially permits the attacker to circumvent the application firewall: a fundamental and historical Java Card security mechanism. Finally, we point out that this breach comes from the latest specification update and more precisely from the introduction of the automatic garbage collection mechanism, which leads to a straightforward countermeasure to the exposed attack.
KW - Application Firewall
KW - Combined Attack
KW - Garbage Collection
KW - Java Card
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84857310094
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-642-28166-2_1
DO - 10.1007/978-3-642-28166-2_1
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84857310094
SN - 9783642281655
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 1
EP - 13
BT - Engineering Secure Software and Systems - 4th International Symposium, ESSoS 2012, Proceedings
Y2 - 16 February 2012 through 17 February 2012
ER -