학술논문

A Framework for Design, Verification, and Management of SoC Access Control Systems
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Computers IEEE Trans. Comput. Computers, IEEE Transactions on. 72(2):386-400 Feb, 2023
Subject
Computing and Processing
Access control
System-on-chip
Hardware
Microprogramming
IP networks
Engines
Safety
Access control systems
system-on-chip architectures
security verification
safety-critical systems
security-critical systems
Language
ISSN
0018-9340
1557-9956
2326-3814
Abstract
System-on-chip (SoC) architectures are a heterogeneous mix of microprocessors, custom accelerators, memories, interfaces, peripherals, and other resources. These resources communicate using complex on-chip interconnect networks that attempt to quickly and efficiently arbitrate memory transactions whose behaviors can vary drastically depending on the current mode of operation and system operating state. Security- and safety-critical applications require access control policies that define how these resources interact to ensure that malicious and unsafe behaviors do not occur. Aker is a design and verification framework for on-chip access control. The core of Aker is the access control wrapper (ACW)–a high-performance yet efficient hardware module that dynamically arbitrates on-chip communications. Aker distributes ACWs across the SoC and programs them to perform local access control. Aker provides a firmware generation tool and a property-driven security verification methodology to ensure that the ACWs are properly integrated and configured. Aker security verification confirms that the ACW behaves properly at IP level. It verifies the hardware root of trust firmware configures the ACW correctly. And it evaluates system-level security threats due to interactions between shared resources. Aker is experimentally validated on a Xilinx UltraScale+ programmable SoC. Additionally, an Aker access control system is integrated into the OpenPULP multicore archtiecture that uses OpenTitan hardware root-of-trust for firmware configuration.