Secure Embedded Processing through Hardware-Assisted Run-Time Monitoring

— Security is emerging as an important concern in embedded system design. The security of embedded systems is often compromised due to vulnerabilities in “trusted” software that they execute. Security attacks exploit these vulnerabilities to trigger unintended program behavior, such as the leakage of sensitive data or the execution of malicious code. In this work, we present a hardware-assisted paradigm to enhance embedded system security by detecting and preventing unintended program behavior. Specifically, we extract properties of an embedded program through static program analysis, and use them as the bases for enforcing permissible program behavior in real-time as the program executes. We present an architecture for hardware-assisted run-time monitoring, wherein the embedded processor is augmented with a hardware monitor that observes the processor’s dynamic execution trace, checks whether the execution trace falls within the allowed program behavior, and flags any deviat...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: DATE
• Authors: Divya Arora, Srivaths Ravi, Anand Raghunathan, Niraj K. Jha
• Keywords: DATE 2005, Hardware, Permissible Program Behavior, Program Behavior, Unintended Program Behavior