Moving Target Defenses in the Helix Self-Regenerative Architecture

Claire Le Goues, Anh Nguyen-Tuong, Hao Chen, Jack W. Davidson, Stephanie
Forrest, Jason D. Hiser, John C. Knight and Matthew Van Gundy

In this chapter we describe the design, development and application of
the Helix Metamorphic Shield (HMS). The HMS: (1) continuously shifts
the program’s attack surface in both the spatial and temporal
dimensions, and (2), reduces the program’s attack surface by applying
novel evolutionary algorithms to automatically repair
vulnerabilities. The symbiotic interplay between shifting and reducing
the attack surface results in the automated evolution of new program
variants whose quality improves over time.