Modeling the Trust Boundaries Created by Securable Objects

Matt Miller presented his work on automatically discovering data flows between trust boundaries in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. Trust boundaries are divisions between privilege levels on a system (e.g., different user accounts or user versus administrator privileges). Discovering paths of data flow between privilege levels allows software auditors to audit only those sections of code where vulnerabilities might actually lead to privilege escalation attacks. Using Miller’s method, the auditor can quickly and automatically discern the relevant attack surface.