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MEM-DnP—A Novel Energy Efficient Approach for Memory Integrity Detection and Protection in Embedded Systems

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Abstract

The pervasiveness of modern day embedded systems has led to the storing of huge amounts of sensitive information in them. These embedded devices often have to operate under insecure environments and are hence susceptible to software and physical attacks. Thus, security has been and will remain one of the prime concerns in the embedded systems. Although a lot of hardware and software techniques have been proposed to provide high levels of security, they are hampered by the trade-offs created by the design constraints in embedded systems. This paper presents a novel energy efficient approach for MEMory integrity Detection and Protection (MEM-DnP). The key feature of the proposed MEM-DnP is that it can be adaptively tuned to a memory integrity verification module by using a sensor module. This significantly reduces the energy overheads imposed on an embedded system as compared to the conventional memory integrity verification mechanisms. The simulation results show that the average energy saved in the combined detection and protection mechanism ranges from 85.5 % to 99.998 %. This is substantially higher compared to the results achieved in basecase simulations with traditional memory integrity verification techniques.

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Acknowledgements

A shorter version of this research in the current archival journal is presented in the blind-reviewed conference paper [24]. In this version, we have discussed in detail the concept of Memory Integrity Verification (MIV) in Sect. 2, expanded the architecture to include memory operations and the hash address computation algorithm in Sect. 4.1, provided a theoretical basis for the optimal selection of V T in the sensor in Sect. 5, added simulation framework details along with an elaborate simulation algorithm to implement MEM-DnP mechanism and have presented new experimental evaluation results using ARM architecture and MiBench benchmarks in Sect. 6.2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Trusted Secure Systems Lab (TSSL), Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, 76203, USA

    Satyajeet Nimgaonkar & Mahadevan Gomathisankaran

  2. NanoSystem Design Lab (NSDL), Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, 76203, USA

    Saraju P. Mohanty

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  1. Satyajeet Nimgaonkar
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Correspondence to Satyajeet Nimgaonkar.

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Nimgaonkar, S., Gomathisankaran, M. & Mohanty, S.P. MEM-DnP—A Novel Energy Efficient Approach for Memory Integrity Detection and Protection in Embedded Systems. Circuits Syst Signal Process 32, 2581–2604 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00034-013-9621-4

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