C-FLAT: Control-Flow Attestation for Embedded Systems Software

Tigist Abera; N Asokan; Lucas Davi; Jan-Erik Ekberg; Thomas Nyman; Andrew Paverd; Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi; Gene Tsudik

doi:10.1145/2976749.2978358

C-FLAT: Control-Flow Attestation for Embedded Systems Software

Tigist Abera, N Asokan, Lucas Davi, Jan-Erik Ekberg, Thomas Nyman, Andrew Paverd, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, Gene Tsudik

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Scientific › peer-review

126 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Remote attestation is a crucial security service particularly relevant to increasingly popular IoT (and other embedded) devices. It allows a trusted party (verifier) to learn the state of a remote, and potentially malware-infected, device (prover). Most existing approaches are static in nature and only check whether benign software is initially loaded on the prover. However, they are vulnerable to runtime attacks that hijack the application's control or data flow, e.g., via return-oriented programming or data-oriented exploits. As a concrete step towards more comprehensive runtime remote attestation, we present the design and implementation of Control-FLow ATtestation (C-FLAT) that enables remote attestation of an application's control-flow path, without requiring the source code. We describe a full prototype implementation of C-FLAT on Raspberry Pi using its ARM TrustZone hardware security extensions. We evaluate C-FLAT's performance using a real-world embedded (cyber-physical) application, and demonstrate its efficacy against control-flow hijacking attacks.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	CCS '16 Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security
Publisher	ACM
Pages	743-754
Number of pages	12
ISBN (Electronic)	978-1-4503-4139-4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/2976749.2978358
Publication status	Published - 24 Oct 2016
MoE publication type	A4 Article in a conference publication
Event	ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security - Hofburg Palace, Vienna, Austria Duration: 24 Oct 2016 → 28 Oct 2016 Conference number: 23 https://www.sigsac.org/ccs/CCS2016/

Conference

Conference	ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
Abbreviated title	CCS
Country/Territory	Austria
City	Vienna
Period	24/10/2016 → 28/10/2016
Internet address	https://www.sigsac.org/ccs/CCS2016/

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https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2978358Licence: Unspecified
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title = "C-FLAT: Control-Flow Attestation for Embedded Systems Software",

abstract = "Remote attestation is a crucial security service particularly relevant to increasingly popular IoT (and other embedded) devices. It allows a trusted party (verifier) to learn the state of a remote, and potentially malware-infected, device (prover). Most existing approaches are static in nature and only check whether benign software is initially loaded on the prover. However, they are vulnerable to runtime attacks that hijack the application's control or data flow, e.g., via return-oriented programming or data-oriented exploits. As a concrete step towards more comprehensive runtime remote attestation, we present the design and implementation of Control-FLow ATtestation (C-FLAT) that enables remote attestation of an application's control-flow path, without requiring the source code. We describe a full prototype implementation of C-FLAT on Raspberry Pi using its ARM TrustZone hardware security extensions. We evaluate C-FLAT's performance using a real-world embedded (cyber-physical) application, and demonstrate its efficacy against control-flow hijacking attacks.",

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booktitle = "CCS '16 Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security",

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Abera, T, Asokan, N, Davi, L, Ekberg, J-E, Nyman, T, Paverd, A, Sadeghi, A-R & Tsudik, G 2016, C-FLAT: Control-Flow Attestation for Embedded Systems Software. in CCS '16 Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security . ACM, pp. 743-754, ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security , Vienna, Austria, 24/10/2016. https://doi.org/10.1145/2976749.2978358

C-FLAT: Control-Flow Attestation for Embedded Systems Software. / Abera, Tigist; Asokan, N; Davi, Lucas; Ekberg, Jan-Erik; Nyman, Thomas; Paverd, Andrew; Sadeghi, Ahmad-Reza; Tsudik, Gene.

CCS '16 Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security . ACM, 2016. p. 743-754.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Scientific › peer-review

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AU - Nyman, Thomas

AU - Paverd, Andrew

AU - Sadeghi, Ahmad-Reza

AU - Tsudik, Gene

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N2 - Remote attestation is a crucial security service particularly relevant to increasingly popular IoT (and other embedded) devices. It allows a trusted party (verifier) to learn the state of a remote, and potentially malware-infected, device (prover). Most existing approaches are static in nature and only check whether benign software is initially loaded on the prover. However, they are vulnerable to runtime attacks that hijack the application's control or data flow, e.g., via return-oriented programming or data-oriented exploits. As a concrete step towards more comprehensive runtime remote attestation, we present the design and implementation of Control-FLow ATtestation (C-FLAT) that enables remote attestation of an application's control-flow path, without requiring the source code. We describe a full prototype implementation of C-FLAT on Raspberry Pi using its ARM TrustZone hardware security extensions. We evaluate C-FLAT's performance using a real-world embedded (cyber-physical) application, and demonstrate its efficacy against control-flow hijacking attacks.

AB - Remote attestation is a crucial security service particularly relevant to increasingly popular IoT (and other embedded) devices. It allows a trusted party (verifier) to learn the state of a remote, and potentially malware-infected, device (prover). Most existing approaches are static in nature and only check whether benign software is initially loaded on the prover. However, they are vulnerable to runtime attacks that hijack the application's control or data flow, e.g., via return-oriented programming or data-oriented exploits. As a concrete step towards more comprehensive runtime remote attestation, we present the design and implementation of Control-FLow ATtestation (C-FLAT) that enables remote attestation of an application's control-flow path, without requiring the source code. We describe a full prototype implementation of C-FLAT on Raspberry Pi using its ARM TrustZone hardware security extensions. We evaluate C-FLAT's performance using a real-world embedded (cyber-physical) application, and demonstrate its efficacy against control-flow hijacking attacks.

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M3 - Conference contribution

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ER -

C-FLAT: Control-Flow Attestation for Embedded Systems Software

Abstract

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