Privacy Protected ELF for Private Computing on Public Platforms

Private computing on public platforms (PCPP) is a new technology designed to enable secure and private execution of applications on remote potentially hostile public platforms. PCPP uses a host assessment to validate a host´s hardware and software configuration and then uses 4 active security building blocks which together allow an application to remain unaltered, unmonitored, and unrecorded before, during, and after execution on the public platform. Privacy protected ELF (PPELF) is the building block used by PCPP to protect application executable code while it is stored on the public platform and to provide a secure binary load mechanism. PPELF is an encrypted binary executable format and methodology which uses just in time decryption during the executable load procedure. In this paper we describe the PPELF file format, our new PPELF binary format loader, and our updates to the GLIBC ELF interpreter to support PPELF. We also provide experimental results detailing the initial load-time and run-time penalty associated with the use of PPELF.