Distrusting cores by separating computation from isolation
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Security mechanisms such as address spaces rely on the assumption that processor cores can be fully trusted. But the steady influx of side-channel vulnerabilities in processors is challenging this assumption. To minimize the impact of security vulnerabilities in processors, we need a system architecture that can tolerate potentially exploitable cores. In this paper, we propose the untrusted core isolation model to protect critical computation on trusted cores from untrusted and potentially buggy cores. We survey how current architectural building blocks such as MMUs fall short of this goal and derive requirements for untrusted core isolation. To demonstrate its feasibility, we discuss both changes to commodity platforms and show how research works such as fulfill the requirements. We evaluate the security benefits via a qualitative comparison of current architectures in both industry and academia and study its costs by a quantitative comparison of the most promising approaches on off-the-shelf and FPGA-based platforms.
Source: Journal of Systems Architecture
Institution: Barkhausen Institut
Language: English
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,910
OpenAlex ID: W4405484425