Pointer Provenance in a Capability Architecture

Abstract

We design and implement a framework for tracking pointer provenance, using our CHERI fat-pointer capability architec- ture to facilitate analysis of security implications of program pointer flows in both user and privileged code, with mini- mal instrumentation. CHERI enforces pointer provenance validity at the architectural level, in the presence of complex pointer arithmetic and type casting. CHERI present new op- portunities for provenance research: we discuss use cases and highlight lessons and open questions from our work.