A path to scale up proven hardware-based security in constrained objects

Nicolas Dejon (1, 2, 3, 4) , Chrystel Gaber (1) , Gilles Grimaud (2, 3, 4)

1 Orange Labs [Caen]
2 CRIStAL - Centre de Recherche en Informatique, Signal et Automatique de Lille - UMR 9189
3 2XS - Extra Small Extra Safe
4 Université de Lille

The Internet of Things is revolutionizing the established embedded systems market. However, embedded system designers aren't traditionnally considering security as a top concern and consider maintaining their current tools and technologies while opening to connectivity. It is thus expected the embedded systems sector will suffer massively from cyberattacks with the risk to break down traditional IT systems with them. This article demonstrates how this situation is a plausible scenario given the current context and exposes how the existing means to build and secure constrained devices are not sufficient enough to reduce the risks. As a countermeasure, we propose the creation of isolated hardware-enforced trustworthy environments targetting constrained devices in need of strong guarantees by adapting the formally proven Pip protokernel. We explore as well what considerations must be beared in mind to scale up the adoption of the proposed solution.

Mots clés: constrained objects; hardware-enforced isolation; proven kernel

Domaines: Système d'exploitation [cs.OS]; Systèmes embarqués

Nicolas Dejon, Chrystel Gaber, Gilles Grimaud. A path to scale up proven hardware-based security in constrained objects. Conférence francophone d'informatique en Parallélisme, Architecture et Système (COMPAS 2020), Jun 2020, Lyon, France. ⟨hal-03318088⟩