Commodity Auxiliary Processors for Enhanced Software Tamper Protection (CAPESTAR)

Software plays an ever-increasing role in modern weapons systems. The consequences of enemies capturing and reverse engineering the software in these systems pose a real risk for the DoD. Anti-tamper technologies protect these assets by increasing the costs associated with extraction of this information by enemy forces. “Out-of-band” protection measures (involving trusted hardware modules) are considered to be most effective, with “in-band” protection measures (implemented only in software) being considered less effective. Increasingly, COTS systems include special-purpose auxiliary processors, such as dedicated graphics processors. These auxiliary processors can substitute for proprietary trusted hardware modules in a hybrid approach to increase the effectiveness of anti-tamper protection. To enhance existing “in-band” protection measures, Architecture Technology Corporation will leverage its extensive experience in software Anti-Tamper technologies to design and build a novel, hybrid anti-tamper approach: Commodity Auxiliary Processors for Enhanced Software Tamper Protection (CAPESTAR). CAPESTAR will move anti-tamper functionality off the main CPU onto COTS auxiliary processors within the system, providing increased resistance to tampering and also “locking” the software to a particular hardware configuration. CAPESTAR will function automatically and will not require any specialized programming knowledge, expertise, or experience related to the specifics of the COTS auxiliary processors used.