Associative Memory for Concurrent Communication Between Cooperative Software Sentinels

The proposed effort will focus on software sentinels and secure inter-sentinel communications to create a new software anti-tamper technique. The goal is to allow all the software sentinels to communicate with each other through a single shared memory variable concurrently (simultaneously). This will allow passing information between the sentinels in a manner that is impervious to inspection (whether manual or automatic) making it difficult for reverse-engineering efforts to interfere with the operation of the sentinels or determine their function. Sentinels themselves can provide software security by monitoring the integrity of the code stored in memory and the timeliness of its execution to ensure that it cannot be successfully reverse-engineered within a reasonable amount of time. The sentinels can monitor and protect each other from interference or destruction. They can also perform anti-tampering operations such as dynamically modifying the application code as it runs in order to thwart an attacker’s reverse engineering efforts. Methods to be considered for implementation of the shared memory include spread spectrum methods, a linear associator, Chinese remaindering, and Fourier or wavelets transforms. Hardware requirements will be determined for improving performance, including the potential use of a DSP chip for implementing a Fourier transform based shared memory.