GenPatcher: Automatically Evolving Invulnerable Systems

Modern civilization relies on a network of embedded devices that are (i) riddled with security vulnerabilities and (ii) remotely hackable. Unfortunately, there seems to be near universal neglect for ensuring the security of these devices. Moreover, the existing IT solutions, such as antivirus software and intrusion-detection systems, do not provide substantial benefits for protection of embedded systems. To address this problem, we propose GenPatcher, a fully automated end-to-end solution for securing embedded-systems software. GenPatcher will integrate (i) GrammaTech's ongoing research on vulnerability discovery and patch evaluation with (ii) recent breakthroughs in genetic program repair. The key advantage of GenPatcher is that it will be able to operate completely autonomously, without requiring human interaction. Thus we expect GenPatcher to significantly reduce the costs of vetting and deploying critical software. GenPatcher will operate directly on software binaries, even in the absence of source code, and thus, will protect equally well newly developed software, third-party codes, and legacy software. We will build GenPatcher to be easily retargetable to different instruction sets to accommodate a variety of platforms employed in the embedded systems domain.