Intermittent computing systems execute long-running tasks under a transient power supply such as an energy harvesting power source. During a power loss, they save intermediate program state as a checkpoint into write-efficient non-volatile memory. When the power is restored, the system state is reconstructed from the checkpoint, and the long-running computation continues. We analyze the security risks when power interruption is used as an attack vector, and we demonstrate the need to protect the integrity, authenticity, confidentiality, continuity, and freshness of checkpointed data. We propose a secure checkpointing technique called the Se-cure Intermittent Computing Protocol (SICP). The proposed protocol has the following properties. First, it associates every checkpoint with a unique power-on state to checkpoint replay. Second, every checkpoint is cryptographically chained to its predecessor, providing continuity, which enables the programmer to carry run-time security properties such as attested program images across power loss events. Third, SICP is atomic and resistant to power loss. We demonstrate a prototype implementation of SICP on an MSP430 microcontroller, and we investigate the overhead of SICP for several cryptographic kernels. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to provide a robust solution to secure intermittent computing.
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Hardware Support for Secure Intermittent Architectures (Extended Abstract)
Intermittent computing applications in the IoT space, such as long-term monitoring of the structural integrity of infrastructures, rely on battery-less computing systems powered through scavenged energy. For such systems, power-loss is a fact of life, and there is a need for a secure power transition mechanism to convert the active system state into a protected nonvolatile form and back. We evaluate the architectural needs to secure these power transitions and to adapt computations based on the scavenged energy. Our objective is to enforce confidentiality, integrity, freshness, and authenticity over the system state across power loss. We observe that secure power transitions are delicate and complex. We need secure checkpoints which are expensive to compute, and which may require hardware-accelerated cryptography and isolated secure non-volatile storage. Next, we observe that in intermittent systems, the energy subsystem does not adapt to the needs of the application. Rather, the application must adjust its computing pattern to the available energy. We define an energy-harvester subsystem interface to optimize the
run-time activity of the intermittent system. The interface drives the optimized execution of a secure communication protocol (covering key-exchange and bulk encryption), such that wasted energy is eliminated and that run-time performance is improved.
We report results from several prototyping experiments.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1704176
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10097903
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Workshop on Energy-Secure System Architectures (ESSA)
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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