Trust Nothing: RTOS Security without Run-Time Software TCB (Extended Version)
Eric Ackermann, Sven Bugiel

TL;DR
This paper introduces a novel capability architecture and a run-time TCB-free real-time OS for embedded devices, enhancing security against multiple threat vectors without hardware modifications.
Contribution
It presents a new capability-based security architecture and a Zephyr-based OS with no run-time software TCB, addressing multiple embedded device security threats.
Findings
FPGA implementation of capability architecture
Zephyr-based OS with disaggregated, isolated components
Enhanced security without hardware modifications
Abstract
Embedded devices face an ever-expanding threat landscape: vulnerabilities in application software, operating system kernels, and peripherals threaten the embedded device integrity. Existing computer-architectural defenses fully consider at most two of these threat vectors in their security model. This paper aims at addressing this gap using a novel capability architecture. To this end, we combine a token capability approach suitable for building an untrusted operating system with protection against malicious devices without requiring hardware changes to peripherals. First, we develop and evaluate a full FPGA implementation of our capability architecture around legacy hardware components. Further, we present a soft real-time operating system based on Zephyr that has no run-time software TCB. To this end, we disaggregate Zephyr's subsystems into small, mutually isolated components.…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSecurity and Verification in Computing · Real-Time Systems Scheduling · Advanced Malware Detection Techniques
