Samuel Weiser (Graz University of Technology), Mario Werner (Graz University of Technology), Ferdinand Brasser (Technische Universität Darmstadt), Maja Malenko (Graz University of Technology), Stefan Mangard (Graz University of Technology), Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi (Technische Universität Darmstadt)

Embedded computing devices are used on a large scale in the emerging internet of things (IoT). However, their wide deployment raises the incentive for attackers to target these devices, as demonstrated by several recent attacks. As IoT devices are built for long service life, means are required to protect sensitive code in the presence of potential vulnerabilities, which might be discovered long after deployment. Tagged memory has been proposed as a mechanism to enforce various fine-grained security policies at runtime. However, none of the existing tagged memory schemes provides efficient and flexible compartmentalization in terms of isolated execution environments.

We present TIMBER-V, a new tagged memory architecture featuring flexible and efficient isolation of code and data on small embedded systems. We overcome several limitations of previous schemes. We augment tag isolation with a memory protection unit to isolate individual processes, while maintaining low memory overhead. TIMBER-V significantly reduces the problem of memory fragmentation, and improves dynamic reuse of untrusted memory across security boundaries. TIMBER-V enables novel sharing of execution stacks across different security domains, in addition to interleaved heaps. TIMBER-V is compatible to existing code, supports real-time constraints and is open source. We show the efficiency of TIMBER-V by evaluating our proof-of-concept implementation on the RISC-V simulator.

View More Papers

Neuro-Symbolic Execution: Augmenting Symbolic Execution with Neural Constraints

Shiqi Shen (National University of Singapore), Shweta Shinde (National University of Singapore), Soundarya Ramesh (National University of Singapore), Abhik Roychoudhury (National University of Singapore), Prateek Saxena (National University of Singapore)

Read More

Profit: Detecting and Quantifying Side Channels in Networked Applications

Nicolás Rosner (University of California, Santa Barbara), Ismet Burak Kadron (University of California, Santa Barbara), Lucas Bang (Harvey Mudd College), Tevfik Bultan (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Read More

Ginseng: Keeping Secrets in Registers When You Distrust the...

Min Hong Yun (Rice University), Lin Zhong (Rice University)

Read More

Tranco: A Research-Oriented Top Sites Ranking Hardened Against Manipulation

Victor Le Pochat (imec-DistriNet, KU Leuven), Tom Van Goethem (imec-DistriNet, KU Leuven), Samaneh Tajalizadehkhoob (Delft University of Technology), Maciej Korczyński (Grenoble Alps University), Wouter Joosen (imec-DistriNet, KU Leuven)

Read More