Operating System Session Isolation for Privilege Protection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Operating system services are vulnerable to attacks due to their elevated security context, allowing malicious users to elevate privileges and disrupt system execution, especially when user-interactive services are exploited.
Innovation Solution
Implementing separate sessions for operating system services and applications during the boot process, where the services are isolated from applications, preventing interactive user logon and thus protecting against privilege elevation attacks, and providing multi-level security through dynamically created sessions based on security considerations.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Power
If user-interactive services are executed with elevated security context, then they can perform system-level tasks, but they become vulnerable to privilege elevation attacks by malicious users
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the execution environment into separate sessions - a first session for operating system services and a second session for applications. This segmentation isolates the services from direct user interaction while maintaining elevated privileges, preventing malicious users from exploiting user-interactive services for privilege elevation attacks.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary session layer between the elevated-privilege services and user applications. The first session acts as a protected intermediary that allows services to maintain high privileges without direct exposure to user-space applications, thereby blocking the attack vector while preserving functionality.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If operating system services are isolated from applications, then security is improved, but interaction between services and applications is restricted
Solution Approach 1:
The session manager acts as an intermediary that facilitates controlled interaction between the first session (services) and second session (applications). It manages session creation, destruction, and communication protocols, enabling safe service-application interaction while maintaining security boundaries through the session abstraction layer.
3Object-affected harmful factors
If multiple sessions are created for different applications, then multi-level security is provided, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The session manager is designed as a universal component that handles multiple sessions with different security requirements through a unified interface. It provides multi-level security for different application types (administrative, trustworthy, untrustworthy) while managing session lifecycle and communication through consistent mechanisms, reducing the perceived complexity for application developers.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods are described for providing security through sessions. In an implementation, a method includes initiating a session, by an operating system, in which operating system services are executable and initiating another session, by the operating system, in which a user-interactive application is executable.