Protecting Communication in Many-Core Systems against Active Attackers

ABSTRACT

The advent of hardware Trojans is posing an increasing threat on complex integrated circuits. Network-on-Chip, the established communication infrastructure for many core systems-on-chip, are growing in complexity. Integration of third-party components, which are increasingly becoming valuable targets, exposes the surface for attacks through the injection of hardware Trojans. In this paper, we address active attacks on NoCs, and focus on the integrity of transmitted data. Basically, we use network coding for the transmission of data in order to increase efficiency and robustness.

We introduce solutions that allow detection of active attacks under the consideration of the constraints in NoCs. The efficiency of these solutions is investigated by means of cycle-accurate simulations. Further, we develop an analytic approach for faster and more flexible but accurate evaluation. We finally analyze the area overhead using a state-of-the-art MPSoC and demonstrate that we can protect the integrity of data with reasonable effort.

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Index Terms

• Computer systems organization

  • Embedded and cyber-physical systems

    • System on a chip

• Networks

  • Network performance evaluation

    • Network performance modeling

  • Network properties

    • Network security

      • Security protocols

  • Network types

    • Network on chip