Hardware-assisted Software Anti-Tamper

In this proposal, we outline a project to develop a hardware-assisted in-memory software protection solution that is independent of the trustworthiness of the operating system (OS). Protection of software with software-only solutions typically relies on at least some components of the OS being correct - this assumption can be invalid during sophisticated attacks. The innovation in this proposal is a hardware-assisted tamper-detection system based on a special add-on card containing a BlueRISC security microprocessor, and a host-resident virtual-to-physical mapping/monitoring and extraction tool (VPMET). This system verifies the integrity of selected software applications during execution by checking their physical memory signatures. The approach has three distinct advantages compared to prior art: (1) it works on operating systems with sophisticated virtual memory schemes; (2) the proposed software-protection technology would protect against both in-wire security as well as physical tampering; and (3) a reactive mechanism can be added to prevent compromised software executing in the host. This project primarily focuses on the software technologies and tools necessary and will use BlueRISC’s hardware platform as a vehicle to demonstrate the approach.