Register-Bank Trojan Isolation in Embedded Microprocessors Through Secure Programming

Microprocessors are core to almost every embedded electronic device; along with wide range of applications from consumer electronics to medical equipment, transportation, etc. Thanks to technological advances the microprocessors are ever increasingly becoming more complex and powerful. The design flow of microprocessors involves various contributing individuals and parties; which might be dispersed around the globe. The scattered nature of design flow poses the threat of adversary individuals and parties inserting malicious hardware in the design; and consequently modifying the original functionalities in an unintended manner. Given the crucial role of microprocessors in the system any vulnerability to potential hardware trojans can be detrimental in case deployed in critical infrastructures like clinical and healthcare monitoring systems, navigation and avionics systems, etc. This study attempts to minimize the risk posed by hardware trojans through isolation of suspicious registers in the registerbankso that the integrity of software running on such microprocessors in not negatively affected.

کلیدواژه ها:

Embedded Microprocessor ، Hardware Trojan ، Secure Programming ، Trojan Isolation ، GCC Compiler