Biblio

Security is a universal concern across a multitude of sectors involved in the transfer and storage of computerized data. In the realm of cryptography, random number generators (RNGs) are integral to the creation of encryption keys that protect private data, and the production of uniform probability outcomes is a revenue source for certain enterprises (most notably the casino industry). Arbitrary thread schedule reconstruction of compare-and-swap operations is used to generate input traces for the Blum-Elias algorithm as a method for constructing random sequences, provided the compare-and-swap operations avoid cache locality. Threads accessing shared memory at the memory controller is a true random source which can be polled indirectly through our algorithm with unlimited parallelism. A theoretical and experimental analysis of the observation and reconstruction algorithm are considered. The quality of the random number generator is experimentally analyzed using two standard test suites, DieHarder and ENT, on three data sets.

Embedded systems are becoming increasingly complex as designers integrate different functionalities into a single application for execution on heterogeneous hardware platforms. In this work we propose a system-level security approach in order to provide isolation of tasks without the need to trust a central authority at run-time. We discuss security requirements that can be found in complex embedded systems that use heterogeneous execution platforms, and by regulating memory access we create mechanisms that allow safe use of shared IP with direct memory access, as well as shared libraries. We also present a prototype Isolation Unit that checks memory transactions and allows for dynamic configuration of permissions.