Ensuring the Integrity of Running Java Programs

The increased use of and reliance on computing devices elicits a desire to ensure the integrity of the software running on these devices. This desire is indeed well founded-malicious software has become a major problem for today's computer systems. Consequently, we have developed the Java Measurement Framework (JMF) for inspecting a running Java program and ensuring the program's integrity. JMF provides a mechanism for writing integrity policies about Java programs. Our implementation provides the capability to extract a measurement of the code and data of the running program and then evaluate this measurement against a policy. The result allows concerned parties to achieve a greater confidence in the integrity of the software running on their systems. We show how our system can be used on several real-world Java programs and with adequate performance overhead.