Ensuring Secure Application Execution and Platform-Specific Execution in Embedded Devices

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expanding at a large rate, with devices found in commercial and domestic settings from industrial sensors to home appliances. However, as the IoT market grows, so does the number of attacks made against it with some reports claiming an increase of 600% in 2017. This work seeks to prevent code replacement, injection, and exploitation attacks by ensuring correct and platform specific application execution. This combines two previously studied problems: secure application execution and binding hardware and software. We present descriptions of both problems and requirements for ensuring both simultaneously. We then propose a scheme extending previous work that meets these requirements, and describe our implementation of the soft-core Secure Execution Processor developed and tested on Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA. Finally, we analyse the scheme and our implementation according to performance and the requirements listed.