Remote attestation of bare-metal microprocessor software: a formally verified security monitor

Jonathan Certes (1) , Benoît Morgan (1)

1 IRIT-ACADIE - Assistance à la Certification d’Applications DIstribuées et Embarquées

Remote attestation is a protocol to verify that a remote algorithm satisfies security properties, allowing to establish dynamic root of trust. Modern architectures for remote attestation combine signature or MAC primitives with hardware monitors to enforce secret confidentiality. Our works are based on a verified hardware/software co-design for remote attestation, VRASED. Its proof is established using formal methods and its implementation is conducted on a simple embedded device based on a single core microcontroller. A heavy modification of the core, along with a hardware monitor, enforces security properties. We propose to extend this method to microprocessors where cores cannot be modified. In this paper, we tackle this problem with support from the microprocessor's debug interface and demonstrate that the same security properties also hold.

Mots clés: Remote attestation; Security; Formal verification; FPGA

Domaines: Architectures Matérielles [cs.AR]

Jonathan Certes, Benoît Morgan. Remote attestation of bare-metal microprocessor software: a formally verified security monitor. Database and Expert Systems Applications - DEXA 2021 Workshops: BIOKDD, IWCFS, MLKgraphs, AI-CARES, ProTime, AISys 2021, Virtual Event, September 27–30, 2021, Proceedings, 1479, Springer International Publishing, pp.42-51, 2021, Communications in Computer and Information Science book series (CCIS), 978-3-030-87100-0. ⟨10.1007/978-3-030-87101-7_5⟩. ⟨hal-03576711⟩