Biblio

Recent technological advancements have proliferated the use of small embedded devices for collecting, processing, and transferring the security-critical information. The Internet of Things (IoT) has enabled remote access and control of these network-connected devices. Consequently, an attacker can exploit security vulnerabilities and compromise these devices. In this context, the secure boot becomes a useful security mechanism to verify the integrity and authenticity of the software state of the devices. However, the current secure boot schemes focus on detecting the presence of potential malware on the device but not on disinfecting and restoring the software to a benign state. This manuscript presents CARE - the first secure boot framework that provides malicious code modification attack detection, resilience, and onboard recovery mechanism for the compromised devices. The framework uses a prototype hybrid CARE: Code Authentication and Resilience Engine to verify the integrity and authenticity of the software and restore it to a benign state. It uses Physical Memory Protection (PMP) and other security enchaining techniques of RISC-V processor to provide resilience from modern attacks. The state-of-the-art comparison and performance analysis results indicate that the proposed secure boot framework provides promising resilience and recovery mechanism with very little (8%) performance and resource overhead.

As the number of Internet of things devices increases, there is a growing importance of securely managing and storing the secret and private keys in these devices. Public-key cryptosystems or symmetric encryption algorithms both use special keys that need to be kept secret from other peers in the network. Additionally, ensuring the integrity of the installed application firmware of these devices is another security problem. In this study, private key storage methods are explained in general. Also, ESP32-S2 device is used for experimental case study for its robust built-in trusted platform module. Secure boot and flash encryption functionalities of ESP32-S2 device, which offers a solution to these security problems, are explained and tested in detail.

New IoT applications are demanding for more and more performance in embedded devices while their deployment and operation poses strict power constraints. We present the security concept for a customizable Internet of Things (IoT) platform based on the RISC-V ISA and developed by several Fraunhofer Institutes. It integrates a range of peripherals with a scalable computing subsystem as a three dimensional System-in-Package (3D-SiP). The security features aim for a medium security level and target the requirements of the IoT market. Our security architecture extends given implementations to enable secure deployment, operation, and update. Core security features are secure boot, an authenticated watchdog timer, and key management. The Universal Sensor Platform (USeP) SoC is developed for GLOBALFOUNDRIES' 22FDX technology and aims to provide a platform for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) that typically do not have access to advanced microelectronics and integration know-how, and are therefore limited to Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products.

Internet of Things (loT) is network connected “Things” such as vehicles, buildings, embedded systems, sensors, as well as people. IoT enables these objects to collect and exchange data of interest to complete various tasks including patient health monitoring, environmental monitoring, system condition prognostics and prediction, smart grid, smart buildings, smart cities, and do on. Due to the large scale of and the limited host processor computation power in an IoT system, effective security provisioning is shifting from software-based security implementation to hardware-based security implementation in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. Moreover, FPGA can take over the work of infrastructure components to preserve and protect critical components and minimize the negative impacts on these components. In this paper, we employ Xilinx Zynq-7000 Series System-on-Chip (SoC) ZC706 prototype board to design an IoT device. To defend against threats to FPGA design, we have studied Zynq-ZC706 to (1) encrypt FPGA bitstream to protect the IoT device from bitstream decoding; (2) encrypt system boot image to enhance system security; and (3) ensure the FPGA operates correctly as intended via authentication to avoid spoofing and Trojan Horse attacks.

Trusting a computer for a security-sensitive task (such as checking email or banking online) requires the user to know something about the computer's state. We examine research on securely capturing a computer's state, and consider the utility of this information both for improving security on the local computer (e.g., to convince the user that her computer is not infected with malware) and for communicating a remote computer's state (e.g., to enable the user to check that a web server will adequately protect her data). Although the recent "Trusted Computing" initiative has drawn both positive and negative attention to this area, we consider the older and broader topic of bootstrapping trust in a computer. We cover issues ranging from the wide collection of secure hardware that can serve as a foundation for trust, to the usability issues that arise when trying to convey computer state information to humans. This approach unifies disparate research efforts and highlights opportunities for additional work that can guide real-world improvements in computer security.