Matthias Schunter from the ICRI Secure Computing in Darmstadt will present his group’s
work on Systems Security for Power- and Performance-Constrained IoT Devices.
Abstract:
The Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Secure Computing focuses on
systems security research for power and compute constrained devices. It is a collaborative
effort between Technical University Darmstadt, University Helsinki, and Intel. In this
talk, we will present selected research of our Institute.
A first area of research that we present are novel defenses against Return-Oriented
Programming (ROP) attacks. This recent class of attacks managed to attack systems by
misusing code that is present on the platform instead of injecting malware. We present the
first defense that is feasible on low-end platform. The core contribution is to extend the
hardware to enforce the control-flow of given hardware. As a consequence, misuse of
existing software can be detected and the corresponding attack mitigated.
A second area of research are trusted execution environments for tiny platforms. In this
project, we modified a given microcontroller to provide hardware-isolated execution to
so-called Lightweight Trusted Modules. This allows user to cordon off security critical
services such that a compromised firmware or operating system can no longer access
security critical information.