Input to the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity 

Input to the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity

Submission date: 

Joint submission 

made by: 

Topic of this

submission: 

RFI topic areas

this submission 

relates to: 

Input 

submission 

contents: 

September 6, 2016 

Benjamin Gittins Ronald Kelson

Chief Technical Officer Chief Executive Officer

b.gittins@synaptic-labs.com r.kelson@synaptic-labs.com 

+356 9944 9390 +356 9944 9390 

Synaptic Laboratories Ltd. Designers of safe and secure

www.synaptic-labs.com computing and communication 

13 Nadur Heights, architectures. Developers of generalNadur NDR-1390, purpose soft IP for FPGA devices, to

MALTA, Europe increase security and performance,

and to reduce circuit area. 

Significant Progress In The Design Of Backwards

Compatible Trustworthy and Dependable computing: 

Synaptic Labs’ Trustworthy resilient universal Secure

Infrastructure Platform (TruSIP) platform 

• Cybersecurity Research and Development 

• Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity 

• Identity and Access Management 

• Internet of Things 

• International Markets

(1) A 1 page executive summary for this comment, in the format

requested by the RFI, which “identifies the topic addressed, the

challenges, and the proposed solution, recommendation, and/or 

finding.” Citations in the Executive Summary map back to the

references listed at the end of the 30 page document attached to this 

submission. We have inserted headings that match these points in

the executive summary.

(2) A supporting 2 page statement: Brian Snow, “Statement on

Synaptic Laboratories Ltd.” (2011) which specifically expresses 

support for advancing the TruSIP architecture.

(3) A 31 page document: B. Gittins, R. Kelson, “OPEN AND

CAPTURE VAST NEW MARKETS BY IMPROVING CYBER 

SECURITY in practically all systems, including embedded micro,

industrial control and public clouds. –– Introducing Synaptic 

Laboratories Limited advanced proposal for a Trustworthy resilient

universal Secure Infrastructure Platform (TruSIP) that will support

todayʼs processor instruction sets, operating systems, middleware

and business and mission critical software”, 22 May 2012, Synaptic 

Laboratories Limited. (The URL’s have been updated in 2016) 

6 September 2016 +356 9944 9390 © www.synaptic-labs.com page 1 of 2 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Input to the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity 

Significant Advances in backwards compatible Trustworthy and Dependable computing: 

Synaptic Labs’ Trustworthy resilient universal Secure Infrastructure Platform (TruSIP) 

1 Page Executive Summary 

RFI Topics: Cybersecurity Research and Development, Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity, Identity and

Access Management, Internet of Things, International Markets) 

Progress being made: TruSIP offers to revolutionise the Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure

as a Service (IaaS) markets that were already valued at USD $20+ billion per annum in 2010. TruSIP will do

this by resolving trust and privacy problems identified by ENISA, DARPA and NIST that currently prevent

organisations from moving vast amounts of sensitive operations from private systems to public and

government clouds. TruSIP is designed to prevent the public cloud provider and their hardware and

software suppliers from maliciously or unintentionally learning or exposing the value of the cloud

clientʼs data, even though the data is being processed in the cloud. That is, it protects against 

malware hidden in the hardware and software employed in the cloud infrastructure. TruSIP can also 

be used to create community clouds for finance, defence, etc. TruSIP will be suitable for critical 

infrastructure and industrial control systems as it extends our “Safe and Secure Real-time” (SSRT) 

computing architecture which is currently being advanced. Altera / Intel PSG is a collaborator on our 

SSRT project: http://tinyurl.com/MCF-SSRT. 

Synaptic Labs’ designs for TruSIP, have been independently reviewed by world class computer security and

survivability specialists working in Government, industry and academia, including: Brian Snow (for 12 years 

a Technical Director of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA R&D, NSA IAD, NSA ADET), Miles Smid

(former acting Chief of the U.S. NIST Computer Security Division), Dr. Santosh Chokhani (has advised the

U.S. State Department, U.S. NIST and U.S. NSA on public key infrastructure), Dr. Axel Krings (Professor of

Computer Science, University of Idaho; fault-tolerant and survivability expert with more than 100 peer 

reviewed scientific publications) and Dr. Richard R. Brooks (Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer 

Engineering, Clemson University; specialist in secure survivable systems and side channel attacks). 

TruSIP provides clients and stakeholders with increased privacy and integrity assurances against many 

external attacks AND insider attacks. It is designed under the explicit assumption that every software and

hardware module in the TruSIP deployment has a latent vulnerability and/or embedded malware. TruSIP 

achieves resilience against potentially devastating insider attacks that could be instigated by the cloud

provider, their staff, and even by the cloudʼs hardware and software suppliers against both the clients and the 

cloud deployment itself. TruSIP is resistant to internal or external malicious code attacks that are 

implemented directly in, or exploit unknown vulnerabilities latent in, the software and hardware employed in

implementing that cloud infrastructure. TruSIP will offer a range of security controls against external network 

facing and internal physical side-channel attacks. TruSIP will harden existing client applications running on

TruSIP to resist external code-injection attacks that exploit buffer overflows. TruSIP will also offer security 

controls for clients against their own insider attacks. TruSIP provides the public cloud system provider and

administrators greater assurance of safe and reliable cloud operation plus legitimate protection against

misplaced assertions, made by clients or stakeholders, that the cloud provider has mishandled or 

compromised client data. At its heart, TruSIP employs a variety of physical and logical security controls in a 

system of “separation of powers” and “checks and balances” to prevent a malicious insider exploiting their 

privileged position to learn or corrupt the value of clientʼs data. More information on our TruSIP proposal is 

found in the document included with this submission. 

The recommendation: We respectfully propose that the Commission’s detailed recommendations to

strengthen cybersecurity should include the following points: 

1.	 Perform an in-depth survey to identify, catalogue and evaluate the viability of all candidate nextgeneration computing solutions that are credibly trustworthy and dependable in multi-jurisdiction, multistakeholder Internet-scale environments that can be incrementally deployed to protect existing security 

software while permitting the transition to higher levels of security assurance and improved capabilities.

This should be easy to perform as there are very few high-assurance computing platforms to evaluate. 

2.	 Perform a high-level security aware Failure Mode and Effects Analysis of today’s computing architecture

that considers the impact of identified security flaws wrt. the stakeholders in multi-jurisdiction, multistakeholder Internet-scale environments. Quantify the costs to the global community of those security 

flaws. Quantify the returns of developing a “fit for purpose” high-assurance computing platform. Fund

the top 7 candidate next-generation computing solutions that are credibly trustworthy and dependable, 

ensuring sufficient diversity between the research agendas / techniques. Ensure equal access and

adequate support for (and team building around) innovative small-to-medium sized enterprises. 

Sincerely, Benjamin Gittins and Ronald Kelson. 

6 September 2016 +356 9944 9390 © www.synaptic-labs.com page 2 of 2 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Statement on Synaptic Laboratories Ltd. by Brian Snow 

Independent Security Consultant 

Former US NSA for 35 years including Technical Director for 12 

23 July 2011 

Brian Snow has worked as an independent security consultant for Synaptic Laboratories 

Limited over several years. He has studied the TruSIP design and has approved his 

following statement for public release: 

“In my career at NSA developing secure equipments for government use, whether 

built by NSA, or built under contract to NSA by commercial firms, or by reviewing 

commercial products and recommending changes that might make them more 

suitable for government work, I was frequently depressed by how hard it was to 

get the design teams to FIRST address the primitives needed to support the 

security architecture, THEN address the other features and controls needed to 

interface with non-secure equipments or human users. It really does make a 

difference! 

When security is involved, "He who gets to the interface first, wins" is true, and 

it REALLY matters. 

Synaptic Laboratories Ltd. is one of those rare firms that really tries to address 

security issues FIRST, as the principal driver of their products. It gives them a "leg 

up" on getting the overall architecture right. Or if not perfectly right, certainly closer 

than those who first design around marketable user features, then try to tack on 

security as an after-thought. 

The approach has obvious value in their current TruSIP design effort. It is clear as 

to what they are about, the content appears sound and it is obvious how each 

component "fits" in a security sense into the overall architecture. This is work that 

many other firms shun or slight, but it IS necessary. Their basic approach is 

directly relevant to Governments and/or any commercial companies that deploy 

products that must function correctly in high-risk environments (that is, facing 

targeted malice). 

Evaluating products to ascertain they can meet security goals in various 

environments is never easy; but, in my experience, by addressing security first in 

design efforts, an evaluation will ALWAYS go more smoothly than an evaluation for 

a product that tries to meet the same security goals, but does not address 

security FIRST in its design process. 

Synaptic Laboratories has a sound design process; this design approach and 

TruSIP need to be championed and moved forward to actual products.” 

"Brian Snow has done more than anyone I know for national security," Prof. Richard Ford, 

Director of the Harris Institute for Assured Information, Florida Institute of Technology. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brian Snow BIO 

Mathematician/computer scientist, Brian taught 

mathematics and helped lay the groundwork for a 

computer science department at Ohio University in 

the late 1960’s. He joined the National Security 

Agency (NSA) in 1971 where he became a 

cryptologic designer and security systems 

architect. 

Brian spent his first 20 years at NSA doing and 

directing research that developed cryptographic 

components and secure systems. Many 

cryptographic systems serving the U.S. 

government and military use his algorithms; they 

provide capabilities not previously available and 

span a range from nuclear command and control to tactical radios for the battlefield. Computer 

Security, Network Security and strong Assurance were major aspects for these systems. He 

created and managed NSA’s Secure Systems Design division in the 1980s. He has many 

patents, awards, and honors attesting to his creativity. 

His later years at NSA were the model for what it means to be a senior Technical Director at 

NSA (similar to a Chief Scientist or Senior Technical Fellow in industry); he served in that 

capacity in three major mission components – 

! The Research Directorate (1994-1995), 

! The Information Assurance Directorate (1996-2002), and 

! The Directorate for Education and Training -- NSA’s Corporate University (2003-2006) 

He was the first Technical Director appointed at the “Key Component” level at NSA, and the only 

“techie” at NSA to serve in such a role across three different Directorates. Throughout those 

years, his Credo was: 

“Managers are responsible for doing things right;
 

Technical Directors are responsible for finding the right things to do.” 

Brian Snow recently had an honor bestowed on him; he is now a “Distinguished Member of the 

Cryptomathematics Institute (CMI)” at the NSA (2011). 

Brian Snow’s contact details: briansnow@comcast.net +1-301-854-3255 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

Ronald Kelson	 Benjamin Gittins Synaptic Laboratories Ltd.

Chairperson and CEO Chief Technical Officer PO BOX 5, Nadur NDR-1000
 

Tel: +356 7956 2164 Tel: +356 9944 9390 MALTA, Europe
 

Fax: +356 2156 2164 Fax: +356 2156 2164 www.synaptic-labs.com 
 

ceo@pqs.io cto@pqs.io www.ictgozomalta.eu
 

OPEN AND CAPTURE VAST NEW MARKETS BY IMPROVING CYBER SECURITY

In practically all systems, including embedded micro, industrial control and public clouds 

Introducing Synaptic Laboratories Limited advanced proposal for a 

Trustworthy resilient universal Secure Infrastructure Platform (TruSIP)

that will support today’s processor instruction sets, operating systems, 

middleware and business and mission critical software

“The TruSIP design is innovative ... and should be realisable in practice.” 

– Independent review team (details in Appendix A3)

“Based on the information provided [Ed: in V0.12 of this document] it looks like a proposal

around your TruSIP technology would be in scope as a response to this BAA.” 

– DARPA-BAA-11-55, Mission-orientated Resilient Clouds (see A5.1)

 (https://www.fbo.gov/spg/ODA/DARPA/CMO/DARPA-BAA-11-55/listing.html)

Contents: 

• 1 page synopsis 

• 3 page introduction 

• On page 6 - the Table of Contents for the Appendices 

• 21 pages of Appendices containing supporting information and fact sheets 

• 3 page bibliography with 93 citations 

TruSIP prevents a 

malicious insider exploiting Client’s software + 	 their privileged position to

A TruSIP 

public cloud 

deployment

sensitive data	 learn or corrupt the value

of client’s data 

A client of a 

TruSIP public cloud	 A malicious insider in the 

cloud which could be located 

	 in its management, technical 

administration, or hardware/

software development

© Synaptic Laboratories Limited – Capture New Computing Markets Proposal v18 – redacted – Open Invitation 

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

One page SYNOPSIS of Synaptic Labs’ trustworthy computing proposal 

Synaptic Labs is a micro research and development company with collaborators spanning a US National

Laboratory, US Government security advisers, specialist technology companies and academic experts.

Synaptic Labs is seeking a global partner for Government funding applications and for development and

global commercialisation of our proposed (backwards compatible) universal fault tolerant computing 

architecture, called the Trustworthy robust universal Secure Infrastructure Platform (TruSIP). 

TruSIP satisfies current EC, UK and USA Government (funded) Calls to unlock new global markets by

resolving a range of hard, high priority, system wide security problems identified by Government and industry, in 

domains ranging from real time embedded micro, critical infrastructure through to public cloud computing. 

Example - public cloud computing: TruSIP offers to revolutionise the Platform as a Service (PaaS) and

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) markets that were already valued at USD $20+ billion per annum in 2010

by enabling public cloud providers to deliver security controls that far exceed those that SME’s can achieve

with today’s private cloud technologies. Widespread adoption of cloud computing has the potential to 

generate over €763 billion of cumulative economic benefits and hundreds of thousands of new jobs over the

period 2010 to 2015. In 2010 the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) cautions that the

full shift to cloud computing may not happen if perceptions in relation to security and resilience-related

aspects of cloud computing solutions deteriorate. In a 2009 survey by InformationWeek Analytics, 53% of

organisations that have NOT adopted the cloud cited confidentiality and security related issues as their 

primary concern. TruSIP is designed to address those concerns by preventing the public cloud provider and

their hardware and software suppliers from maliciously or unintentionally learning or exposing the value of

the cloud client’s data. TruSIP can also be used to create community clouds for finance, defence, etc. 

Example - large system of systems: TruSIP is designed to cost effectively address currently unmet, endto-end security, availability and reliability needs in large system-of-system projects (such as smart grids and

other critical infrastructures, medical & financial systems, defence, B2B, ...) by combining the resilience, 

reliability and availability of safety systems with the access and security controls of ICT systems within one 

unified ubiquitous computing architecture e.g. TruSIP enabled clouds will run in high availability and integrity 

modes to meet fail-safe requirements. Likewise, TruSIP enabled industrial control devices will satisfy ICT

confidentiality and access control requirements. TruSIP is designed to protect against insiders, kill switches 

and code injection attacks that exploit buffer overflows. Clearly, TruSIP has the potential to revolutionise the

critical infrastructure protection industry and realise Secure and Resilient Financial Transaction Systems. 

TruSIP is universal: Variants of TruSIP will support today’s processor instruction sets, operating 

systems, middleware and business and mission critical software. Software variants of TruSIP are 

targeted for use on commercial-off-the-shelf smart cards and hardware security modules. Hardware 

variants of TruSIP are designed to implement trustworthy and dependable sensors, actuators, programmable

logic controllers, industrial control systems, embedded micros, network routers, tablets, workstations,

Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service clouds (when implemented in FPGA and 3D ASIC). 

TruSIP has been designed to achieve efficiency and cost effectiveness: Even with confidentiality, 

integrity and availability controls in place, TruSIP in hardware will execute client tasks only a little slower 

than unsecured computation. TruSIP in software will match the performance restraints of smartcards. 

Validating universality and backwards compatibility: Synaptic Labs is working with leading technology 

companies to validate and ensure that TruSIP can cost effectively enhance and support their existing

technologies and products. TruSIP is expected to enable rapid growth of their respective markets and

market share by removing major barriers to market uptake, for example, of public cloud computing. 

Independent Security Review: The core TruSIP proposal has been independently reviewed by world class 

computer security and survivability specialists working in Government, industry and academia (appendix A3). 

TruSIP, formal methods, safety and security compliance: Synaptic Labs’ has been independently 

advised that the high-level architecture of the TruSIP proposal is suitable for targeting high IEC 61508 Safety 

Integrity Levels (SIL). Synaptic Labs’ goal is to develop TruSIP using formal methods (such as the BMethod). Synaptic Labs’ seeks to simultaneously achieve the highest IEC 61508 Safety Integrity Level (SIL) 

and Common Criteria (CC) Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) certifications on implementations of our 

TruSIP proposal. END SYNOPSIS.

© Synaptic Laboratories Limited – Capture New Computing Markets Proposal v18 – redacted – Open Invitation 

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

3 page INTRODUCTION to Synaptic Labs’ trustworthy computing proposal 

Synaptic Labs (see appendix A1) is a micro research and development company with collaborators spanning

a US National Laboratory, US Government security advisers, specialist technology companies, and

academic experts. We are seeking a development and global commercialisation partner for our proposed

new (backwards compatible) universal fault tolerant computing architecture, called the Trustworthy robust 

universal Secure Infrastructure Platform (TruSIP). TruSIP is designed to unlock new global markets by 

resolving a range of hard, high priority, system wide security problems identified by Government and industry 

in domains ranging from critical infrastructure through to public and government cloud computing (see

appendix A6). TruSIP is universal because the one design can ubiquitously meet the needs of fail-safe

high-availability embedded micro systems, all the way up to high performance computing servers, including

systems-of-systems such as smartgrids (see appendix A7). 

Example application - public cloud computing: TruSIP offers to revolutionise the Platform as a Service 

(PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) markets that were already valued at USD $20+ billion per 

annum in 2010 (see appendix A12). TruSIP will do this by resolving trust and privacy problems identified by 

ENISA, DARPA and NIST that currently prevent organisations from moving vast amounts of sensitive

operations from private systems to public and government clouds (appendix A7). In one sentence, TruSIP is 

designed to prevent the public cloud provider and their hardware and software suppliers from maliciously or 

unintentionally learning or exposing the value of the cloud client’s data, even though the data is being

processed in the cloud. TruSIP can also be used to create community clouds for finance, defence, etc. 

TruSIP will capture new markets by enabling public cloud providers to deliver security controls that far 

exceed those that SME’s can achieve with today’s private cloud technologies, thereby overcoming barriers to 

public cloud take up, delivering lower ICT capital and recurrent costs for users, including lightening the ever 

increasing complexity and security burden cost on SME’s. Clearly, these TruSIP project goals far exceed 

those of the currently active EU FP7 - IBM - TClouds (€10.5 m) project (see comparison in appendix A11.1). 

Potential Benefits in Public Cloud Market: In 2010 the Centre for Economics and Business Research 

(CEBR) found that across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, widespread adoption of cloud

computing has the potential to generate over €763 billion of cumulative economic benefits and hundreds of 

thousands of new jobs over the period 2010 to 2015 [1]. Andrew Moloney, a director of the U.S. based IT

firm EMC (ranked 152 in the Fortune 500) which commissioned the study, says: 

“70 percent of the time in IT departments is spent on keeping the lights on as opposed to 

innovating and driving new business models.” ... “Cloud computing is unlocking that capability.” [2] 

CEBR predicts that, if public perception remains positive, we could see the current 20% business workload

in (public and private clouds) grow to 100% by 2014 on account of the cost savings and increased

productivity [3]. For example, CEBR estimates that businesses moving from a standard computing

environment to a full public cloud computing environment could see an impressive 39.9% savings in total IT

capital expenditure budgets [3]. 

However, CEBR cautions that the full shift to cloud computing may not happen if perceptions in relation to

security and resilience-related aspects of cloud computing solutions deteriorate [3]. According to a

2010 report, IDC (a global market intelligence firm) predicts that security controls will be required to protect

over 90% of all files and folders in the Digital Universe by 2020 [4]. Failing to protect that data can hurt the 

bottom line. According to a 2010 study by the Ponemon Institute, the total annualized cost of cyber crime

(for a benchmark sample of 45 organizations) ranged from a low of $1 million to a high of nearly $52 million

[1]. The Institute estimates that the recent 2011 Sony data breaches may cost the company USD ~1.5

billion from a product division with a USD ~500 million annual profit [81]. 

Governments and businesses are increasingly looking for assurances that the clouds are

trustworthy. According to an ENISA report, administrator roles in today’s cloud architectures expose cloud

customers to extremely high risk [2]. ENISA says these insider attacks have a Medium probability of 

occurrence and will have a Very High negative impact on stakeholders [2]. As demonstrated by the 2010 

Google privacy breach, even highly visible insider attacks that deface customers accounts can go on, 

undetected by a public cloud provider for months [5]. In fact it required several clients to notify Google that

insider attacks were being instigated by a Google employee [5]. Discretely executed insider attacks focused

solely on the unauthorised duplication of client’s data/intellectual property are self evidently much harder to 

detect by the cloud provider or customer. 

© Synaptic Laboratories Limited – Capture New Computing Markets Proposal v18 – redacted – Open Invitation 

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

DARPA pointed [86] to a research report on Cloud Governance, Risk and

Compliance [84] by InformationWeek Analytics (July 2009) where 38% of

respondents (208 out of 548 surveyed) said that they would not use the cloud. Of 

those 208 who would not use the cloud, 53% cited security related issues. Security 

concerns dominate both cloud adopters and non-adopters with “... 51% of CIOs 

surveyed ... cited security as their greatest concern surrounding cloud

adoption” as reported in a keynote transcript at the RSA conference March 2010 

[85]. See appendix A13 for more information. 

Dr. Howard Shrobe, Program Manager for the pending DARPA-BAA-11-55 I2O

Mission Orientated Resilient Clouds project argues “Clouds are concentrated Vulnerability Amplifiers” 

because they are monocultured, have huge concentration of hosts on high speed network without internal

checks, have implicit trust among hosts, they have resource sharing and co-residence of unrelated

computations, are an obvious target, are vulnerable to activity monitoring and other types of side-channel

attack vulnerabilities [86]. TruSIP is explicitly designed to address the above security problems and

more, to enable public clouds that are safer than today’s private clouds (see appendix 5a). 

“It’s not about security, its about Trustworthiness of our digital infrastructure. 

This means Security and Reliability, Resilience, Privacy and Usability.” 

– Dr. Jeanette Wing, Assistant Director for Computer & Information Science and Engineering, 

U.S. National Science Foundation. Spoken at the NITRD 2010 webcast event [6]. 

TruSIP is designed from the ground up as a cryptographic project exploiting existing security standards, to 

capture and unlock the true potential of the cloud market, by delivering the missing security controls

required to enable individuals and organisations to make the transition from hybrid clouds to public clouds: 

•	 TruSIP provides clients and stakeholders with increased privacy and integrity assurances against many 

external attacks AND insider attacks. It is designed under the explicit assumption that every sw/hw

module in the TruSIP deployment has a latent vulnerability and/or embedded malware. TruSIP achieves 

resilience against potentially devastating insider attacks that could be instigated by the cloud provider,

their staff, and even by the cloud’s hardware and software suppliers against both the clients and the

cloud deployment itself. TruSIP is resistant to internal or external malicious code attacks that are 

implemented directly in, or exploit unknown vulnerabilities latent in, the software and hardware 

employed in implementing that cloud infrastructure (see also appendix A7). TruSIP will offer a range of

security controls against external network facing and internal physical side-channel attacks. TruSIP will 

harden existing client applications running on TruSIP to resist external code-injection attacks that exploit 

buffer overflows. TruSIP will also offer security controls for clients against their own insider attacks. 

•	 TruSIP provides the public cloud system provider and administrators greater assurance of safe and

reliable cloud operation plus legitimate protection against misplaced assertions, made by clients or 

stakeholders, that the cloud provider has mishandled or compromised client data.
 

TruSIP employs a variety of physical and logical 

A malicious insider in the cloud

e.g. If a semiconductor foundry 

backdoor in the integrated circuits used

by a hardware security module, TruSIP is 

designed to prevent that attacker (acting

unilaterally) from using thei

A client of the public cloud

A client encrypts sensitive

data and sends it to a TruSIP 

A TruSIP public cloud deployment

c cloud for processing on receives encrypted client data, decrypts 

the client’s software. 

A TruSIP node (illustrated as a blue cube) 

it, and performs operations on the

unencrypted client data inside the 

Client’s software + sensitive data 

powers” and “checks and balances” to prevent a 

malicious insider exploiting their privileged position

to learn or corrupt the value of client’

security controls in a system of “separation of 

s data 

installs a 

publi

r backdoor to protection of TruSIP which includes extract the client’s data out of the TruSIP hardware security modules. node over the Internet (see appendix A9) 

© Synaptic Laboratories Limited – Capture New Computing Markets Proposal v18 – redacted – Open Invitation 

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

TruSIP efficiency and cost effectiveness: Synaptic Labs has completed significant design work on the

TruSIP proposal (see appendix A10), including identifying techniques to increase efficiency, control cost and

ensure universality of application (see appendix A8). By way of a single data point comparison, the U.S.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) PROCEED project [7] seeks to improve secure

computation in un-trusted servers/clouds by a factor of 10+ million times, to achieve a result that will still be 

100,000x times more computationally expensive than conventional unencrypted processing [8]. TruSIP’s 

alternate approach to achieving security in the cloud requires only ~2.5x to ~3.5x more computational effort

(for fail-safe and non-stop solutions respectively) when implemented in hardware (see appendix A8.1).

TruSIP in hardware will execute tasks only marginally slower than an unsecured computation (see 

appendix A8.2). TruSIP in software will match the performance restraints of smartcards. 

TruSIP goes well beyond improving the trustworthiness of public and private clouds 

TruSIP is universal: TruSIP is designed to cost effectively address currently unmet, end-to-end security,

availability and reliability needs in large system-of-system projects (such as smart grids and other critical

infrastructures, medical & financial systems, defence, B2B, ...) by combining the resilience, reliability and

availability of safety systems with the access and security controls of ICT systems within one unified 

ubiquitous computing architecture (see A7). To achieve ubiquitous end-to-end scope: Software variants 

of TruSIP are targeted for use on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) smart cards and hardware security 

modules. Hardware variants of TruSIP are targeted to create trustworthy and dependable sensors,

actuators, programmable logic controllers, industrial control systems, embedded micros, network routers,

tablets, workstations, servers, and clouds (in FPGA and ASIC). See appendix A14 for a list of markets 

targeted by the software and hardware variants. 

Validating universality and backwards compatibility: Synaptic Labs is working with leading technology 

companies (see appendix A4) to validate and ensure that TruSIP can cost-efficiently enhance and support

their technologies, as well as grow their respective markets. Hardware variants of TruSIP will support 

today’s processor instruction sets, operating systems, middleware and business and mission critical

software (see appendix A7.3). 

Independent Security Review: The core TruSIP proposal has been independently reviewed by world class 

computer security and survivability specialists working in Government, industry and academia (appendix A3). 

TruSIP is the real deal: Responding to market pressures, some organisations make bold claims that their 

software products running on COTS blade servers can protect enterprises from privileged cloud provider 

administrators. If software alone was sufficient, why do organisations invest in hardware security modules to

protect keys? Unfortunately these customer applied countermeasures cannot stop cloud administrators 

from gaining access to the unprotected memory of the client’s virtual machine, from where they can then

trivially acquire the client’s secret keys, and all the customer applied security controls unravel... In contrast, 

TruSIP is designed to comprehensively address this and related types of attacks. 

A winning proposal: Synaptic Labs’ TruSIP proposal is winning interest in both industry and Government.

In Malta we have support for our project (see appendix A2, www.ictgozomalta.eu) at both the Ministerial and

Government Agency level, from business chambers and academia and have now received seed funding

from the Malta Government. We are bringing together an international team of collaborators to support the

development of TruSIP in software, field programmable gate arrays and 3-D integrated circuits over the next

few years (development speed will be dependant on the level of resourcing and collaborative participation). 

An invitation to join the revolution: Synaptic Laboratories Limited seeks a global commercial partner 

whose existing product portfolio and cloud/industrial control marketing objectives can be significantly 

enhanced by TruSIP. They could also join or lead our consortium in funding bids discussed in appendix A5.

Synaptic Labs would like to open up technical discussions to enable you to learn more about our proposal,

validate our claims, explore how we can best support your technology stack and customer base, and to identify

potential synergies in joint collaboration in Malta and internationally, with a view towards global marketing. 

Funding opportunities: Governments are currently offering funding for cyber security including secure

cloud computing implementation projects. Please see A5 for details on EU and US opportunities. The 

TruSIP independent review team (Appendix A3) are willing to support such bids. 

This completes the three page introduction text. Supporting information, bibliography and Fact Sheets appear

in the appendices attached - see the Table of Contents for the appendices on page 6.

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

“There's no such thing as ‘secure’ anymore” ... “We have to build our systems on the

assumption that adversaries will get in.” ... “We have to, again, assume that all the

components of our system are not safe, and make sure we're adjusting accordingly.” 

- Debora Plunkett, Director IAD, U.S. National Security Agency (Dec 2010) [10] 

Table of Content in Appendices 

A1. About Synaptic Laboratories 7
 

A2. About ICT Gozo Malta and Synaptic Labs’ Projects 8
 

A3. World class experts in security and survivability have reviewed TruSIP 10
 

A4. Companies assisting with technical questions at key points throughout the TruSIP design process 11
 

A5. Funding opportunities in next generation cybersecurity 11
 

A5.1 Example funding opportunity: DARPA BAA 11-55 call 11
 

A5.2 Example funding opportunity: UK Government GBP 650 million cyber security initiative 12
 

A6. Synaptic Labs’ continues to align our R&D proposals to the community’s calls 13
 

A7. What is TruSIP 14
 

A7.1 A very high-level description of the TruSIP architecture 14
 

A7.2 Techniques used in TruSIP 14
 

A7.3 TruSIP will support and enhance today’s mainstream technologies 15
 

A7.4 TruSIP hardens existing CPU architectures 15
 

A8 TruSIP’s performance 16
 

A8.1 Comparing the performance and efficiency of TruSIP against the nearest competitor in the security space 16
 

A8.2 Comparing the performance and efficiency of TruSIP with systems that employ double and triple modular 

redundancy 17
 

A8.3 Comparing the performance of TruSIP and conventional hardware security modules 18
 

A8.4 Comparing the power efficiency of TruSIP and commodity processors 18
 

A8.5 TruSIP performance and efficiency when using advanced ASIC techniques 19
 

A9. Kill switch resistance 19
 

A10. The current development status of TruSIP 20
 

A11. Comparing TruSIP with other proposals funded by Governments 21
 

A11.1 Comparing TruSIP with the EU FP7 / IBM TClouds Project (2010 -2013) 21
 

A11.2 Comparing TruSIP with the DARPA BAA 10-70, Clean-slate design of Resilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts (CRASH) 

(2010-active) 22
 

A11.3 Comparing TruSIP with the DARPA AFRL-IF-RS-TR-2006-237 (2006) 23
 

A11.4 Comparing TruSIP with the Malicious-and Accidental-Fault Tolerance for Internet Applications (MAFTIA) project
 

(2003) 23
 

A11.5 Comparing TruSIP with the DARPA Scalable Intrusion Tolerant ARchitecture (SITAR) - 2003 24
 

A12. Cloud market size in 2011 and projected for 2020 24
 

A13. Primary reasons for not using cloud services 25
 

A14. Market spaces that can be targeted by different variants of TruSIP 26
 

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9/22/2010

7

Summary of Comments: Scope

• Address IDMS requirements

• Address Cloud Computing Models

• CKMS Framework document mission and user 

community need to be better defined

• Define minimum set of components

• Include policies

– I&A

13

– Edge devices

• Address edge devices

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

A1. About Synaptic Laboratories 

Synaptic Laboratories [26] is a private micro Research and Development company managed by Australian

citizens with Directors in Gozo, Malta (Europe) and Australia. We are operating internationally on a ‘virtual’

basis with more than ten years of completed research and design. Our core business is cutting edge cross 

domain research and design for trustworthy and dependable computing (including cloud), information

security (identity management, cryptography), and next generation wide area network designs. Our 

proposals offer a holistic response to a wide range of the hard open problems identified in recent calls by

Agencies such as DHS, NIST and NITRD (see appendix A6). Our proposals seek to protect the legitimate

interests of all stakeholders in multi-jurisdiction, co-operative and collaborative,

Internet-scale environments. National Cyber Leap Year 

Summit 2009 Participants’ Synaptic Labs is/has been active in various EU and US Federal Cyber Security Ideas Report

initiatives. For brevity, we will focus on our US activities. Our CTO was one of the Exploring Paths to New Cyber Security 

Paradigms few foreign participants invited to the U.S. Federal Networking and Information

Technology Research and Development (NITRD) [12] National Cyber Leap Year September 16, 2009

Summit (NCLY), where six of our proposals were accepted for publication [26].

EXTRACTS

Synaptic Labs presented twice [13], [14] at the April 2010 Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL http://
 

ornl.gov/) [15] 6th Annual Cybersecurity and Information Intelligence Research Workshop [16] on topics 

relating to global-scale identity and cryptographic key management. Synaptic Labs’ collaborator Sonalysts ( 

www.ictgozomalta.eu/vision-and-projects/international-cyber-security-context/112-popup-sonalysts.html ) 

published reference to our solutions at the NATO Cyber Security Symposium [17] event and co-presented
 

with us at the ORNL event in the context of
 

new security for smart-grids.
 

Synaptic Labs also presented twice [18],

[19] at the May 2010 IEEE Key

Management Summit [20] ( 

http://2010.keymanagementsummit.org ) on 

identity management and cryptographic 

key management subjects and was 

promoted as a sponsor of the event. 

As part of the USA Federal Cyber Security

Initiatives, in 2009 NIST launched a new 

Project in cryptographic key management.

The Project has several functions. It is 

currently creating a new standard

(suitable for international use) on

“Designing Cryptographic Key

Management Systems”. NIST is also 

creating a new Profile (of that standard) 

that specifically prescribes the future

USA Federal requirements on new

cryptographic key management products.

Synaptic Labs provided 157 pages of

feedback in response to NIST’s call (out

a total of ~200 pages received by NIST) that related to both the framework and the Government profile.

Over 95% of all feedback chosen by NIST for focused discussion (see a screen shot above) at their 2 day

industry workshop was found only in, or had overlap with, Synaptic Labs’ feedback, and key points were

endorsed for inclusion in the next revision of the draft document. 

Summary of Comments: Scope Summary of Comments: Scope 

• Design should specify how CKMS supports 

mutually suspicious autonomous organizations 

• Address global survivability 

• Include handling of biometric data 

• Scope must be expanded to go beyond today s 

enterprise CKM solutions to achieve globalscale objectives 

• The lack f sufficiently expressive CKMS

14 

• The lack of a sufficiently expressive CKMS 

domain model/taxonomy/nomenclature is a 

major problem 

Synaptic Labs has also provided extensive comments to the U.S. National Telecommunications and

Information Administration on their Privacy calls. Please visit our company website www.synaptic-labs.com

for more detailed information on the above mentioned activities in the US and our many activities Europe.

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A2. About ICT Gozo Malta and Synaptic Labs’ Projects 

The ICT Gozo Malta project (https://www.ictgozomalta.eu/) [21] was co-founded by Synaptic Laboratories 

[36] and the Gozo Business Chamber (www.gozobusinesschamber.org/) [22] and officially launched in 

December 2010. Working in close collaboration with key Government and other stakeholders and selected

leading International companies, ICT Gozo Malta’s objective is to support the realization of the Synaptic 

Laboratories Limited global vision based on their 10+ years of research. In Malta, the ICT Gozo Malta 

Project has extensive support at both the Ministerial and Agency level, with organisations such as the Malta 

Information Technology Agency (www.mita.gov.mt/) [23] and Malta Enterprise (www.maltaenterprise.com/)

[24], publishing [21] their support for the ICT Gozo Malta Project. In 2011 the project has received seed 

funding from the Malta Government. The Project has also received industry support from the Malta 

Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry (http://www.maltachamber.org.mt)[25]. 

Synaptic Labs’ projects are focussed on technology proposals and solutions that have already started to win

international recognition and that match international high priorities (such as EU and USA), 

in cutting edge ICT fields such as Secure Internet 

(www.ictgozomalta.eu/vision-and-projects/project-future-internet-janelda.html), Secure ID and key 

management (www.ictgozomalta.eu/vision-and-projects/project-global-scale-idm-and-ckm.html) and Secure 

Computing (www.ictgozomalta.eu/vision-and-projects/project-trusip-for-clouds.html). Projects will involve 

several of the 6 proposals from Synaptic Labs that were presented at and published [26] in the proceedings 

of the United States Government Cyber Security Summit (NITRD NCLY), August 2009.

(https://www.nitrd.gov/nitrdgroups/index.php?title=National_Cyber_Leap_Year_Summit_2009) 

Synaptic Labs’ is focused on

new solutions that solve hard 

problems and that offer the

essential features called for by 

Government Agencies and

leading industry organisations 

such as the Cloud Security 

Alliance. 

In particular, Synaptic Labs’

solutions are explicitly

designed to enable

competitors to obtain stronger

security for themselves by

collaborating with their 

opponents. 

These designs offer global

deployment (and marketing) 

potential, not just because of

their technical design, but also

because they address the

human trust problems that

currently prevent true global

cyber security. 

https://www.ictgozomalta.eu/vision-and-projects/introduction-and-overview-map.html 

(The above image described our development roadmap on the 11th July, 2011) 

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

The ICT Gozo Malta Steering Committee: 

Position Organisation Person Job Title 

Chair The Gozo Business Chamber (GBC)

www.gozobusinesschamber.org/ 

Joe Grech President 

Vice-Chair Synaptic Laboratories Limited

www.synaptic-labs.com 

Ron Kelson CEO 

Government 

Members 

Malta Information Technology Agency 

(MITA) www.mita.gov.mt/ 

Claudio Grech Chairman 

Peter Xuereb Director 

Malta Communications Authority (MCA)

www.mca.org.mt/ 

Philip Micallef Chairman 

Steve Agius CIO 

Malta Enterprise (ME)

www.maltaenterprise.com/ 

Alan Camilleri Exec Chairman 

Dennis Vella Head of 

Internationalisation Unit 

and Enterprise Europe 

Network 

Malta Council for Science and Technology 

(MCST)

www.mcst.gov.mt/ 

Nicholas Sammut CEO 

Eric Flask Director 

Malta College of Arts, Science & 

Technology (MCAST)

www.mcast.edu.mt 

Maurice Grech Principal 

Prof. Mario Pace ICT Director 

Ministry of Gozo

www.gozo.gov.mt 

Manuel Tabone Director (nominated by 

the Minister for Gozo) 

Industry 

Members 

Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise

and Industry

www.maltachamber.org.mt/ 

Ray Muscat Director General 

The Gozo Business Chamber (GBC)

www.gozobusinesschamber.org/ 

David Pace ICTGM Project Manager 

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

A3. World class experts in security and survivability have reviewed TruSIP 

The core technical description of TruSIP proposal has been independently studied (under NDA) by: 

•	 Mr. Brian Snow (Bio [27], LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-snow-46b0131)
 

An independent security and ethics consultant; formerly a cryptologic designer, security systems 

architect and then for 12 years a Technical Director of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA R&D,

NSA IAD, NSA ADET).
 

•	 Mr. Miles Smid ( Resume [28], LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/milessmid [29])

President of Orion Security Solutions which is owned by ENTRUST (www.entrustdatacard.com/profile/)

[30]; former acting Chief of the U.S. NIST Computer Security Division; twice received the highest

civilian honor from the USA Department of Commerce, one being for leadership developing

the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) which is now used worldwide; selected as a NIST

distinguished scientist. Currently in the NIST Cryptographic Key Management (CKM) framework project 

[31] team. 

•	 Dr. Santosh Chokhani 
 

President of CygnaCom Solutions which is wholly owned by ENTRUST 
 

(www.entrustdatacard.com/profile/) [30]; has advised the U.S. State Department, U.S. NIST and U.S.

NSA on public key infrastructure and is a member of the NIST CKM framework project [31] team.
 

•	 Dr. Axel Krings (www2.cs.uidaho.edu/~krings/ [34])
 

Professor of Computer Science, University of Idaho; fault-tolerant and survivability expert with more

than 100 peer reviewed scientific publications.
 

•	 Dr. Richard R. Brooks (www.clemson.edu/ces/departments/ece/faculty_staff/faculty/rbrooks.html [35])

Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clemson University, South Carolina;

specialist in secure survivable systems and side channel attacks. 

All of the above information security and survivability experts independently agree: 

1.	 That the TruSIP design is innovative and appears to offers a unique capability. 

2.	 None are aware of any specific publicly available work comparable to the TruSIP architecture. 

3.	 That the design should be realisable in practice. 

Concerning covert channels attacks, the reviewers are confident that TruSIP’s security addresses covert

storage channel attacks by a privileged insider in the cloud. Several are now specifically reviewing TruSIP’s 

security against covert timing channel attacks by privileged insiders in the cloud. 

In addition to the expert opinions of the TruSIP reviewers, it is also Synaptic Labs’ opinion that the TruSIP 

design is unique. This opinion is based on our own survey of 150+ publications in trustworthy and

dependable computing, plus another 60+ publications (selected for relevance out of 240+ publications [36]) 

1 on covert channel attacks . 

While it is not the official policy of the US Government's Department of Energy (DOE) www.energy.gov/ to 

endorse products, TruSIP has also been studied by: 

•	 Dr. Frederick Sheldon (www.csm.ornl.gov/~sheldon/) [33]
 

Sr. Research Staff Member at U.S. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ornl.gov) [15]; a specialist in
 

Secure and Dependable Systems.
 

Consequently ORNL has agreed to join with other TruSIP reviewers, their respective organisations and with

Synaptic Labs in support of US Government contract bids to advance the TruSIP design.

The text in this appendix (A3) has been approved for publication by the individuals named. 

1 Of those 240+ publications on covert channels [36], we contributed the references to some ~40 of those

papers as a result of our internal survey process.

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

A4. Companies assisting with technical questions at key points throughout the

TruSIP design process 

Synaptic Labs is currently expanding the number of companies providing technical advice on key points 

throughout the TruSIP design process to help ensure existing globally deployed products and other new

cutting edge technologies are supported: 

• Oracle Java SE Embedded, UK 

• ARM, UK 

• Entrust, USA (through it’s wholly owned subsidiaries) 

• Tezzaron Semiconductor, USA [37] 

• Aeroflex Gaisler, USA [38] 

• Others 

A5. Funding opportunities in next generation cybersecurity 

As described in appendix A6 the TruSIP design proposal is aligned with many important calls made by 

Governments and Industry relating to cybersecurity in computing systems. This strategic alignment ideally 

positions TruSIP in funding calls. For example, TruSIP specifically addresses Technical Target Areas in the

current USA DARPA BAA 11-55, I2O Mission-oriented Resilient Clouds [9] (closes July 25, 2011). The UK 

Government has recently allocated GBP 650 million for cyber security initiatives. The Malta Government 

offers funding opportunities, as does EC FP7. We provide a little more information on two example Calls for 

new solutions with funding opportunities below. 

A5.1 Example funding opportunity: DARPA BAA 11-55 call 

The USA DARPA BAA 11-55, I2O Mission-oriented Resilient Clouds [9] opened on June 8 and closes on July 

25, 2011. DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of security and resilience of largescale networked computing systems including both Cloud Computing infrastructures and large-scale

distributed systems. Quoting DARPA [9]: 

“DARPA believes that we must not only address host vulnerabilities but must also pursue cleanslate approaches to the design of networked computations and cloud-computing infrastructures. 

The Mission-oriented Resilient Clouds (MRC) program is intended to be a companion program 

to the existing Clean-slate design of Resilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts (CRASH) effort. 

CRASH takes a clean-slate approach to limiting the vulnerabilities within each host. Missionoriented Resilient Clouds is concerned with the amplifying effect of the network, seeking to turn 

this around and use the network as a vulnerability damper and a source of resiliency. The 

focus of the Mission-oriented Resilient Clouds program is to support mission-oriented 

computation running on an ensemble of interconnected hosts acting in concert. The goal is to 

provide resilient support to the mission through adaptation.” 

DARPA anticipates making multiple awards in each technical area, with typical awards ranging between

$500K and $1.5M per effort per year [9]. TruSIP addresses goal and objectives found in 3 Technical Areas of 

Interest in this call: 

– Scalable and tunable innate distributed defenses 

– Optimizing missions and resources 

– Manageable and taskable diversity 

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Cloud

 

 

TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

TruSIP is designed to address key issues in the points raised in the “Required Capabilities for DoD Clouds”: 

Required Capabilities for DoD Clouds 

(ISAT War Clouds Study) 

• Security: Confidentiality & Integrity of data 

and computation 

• Accountability: Auditing, logging, forensics 

Current commercial 

clouds don’t do these at 

the level required for DoD • Heterogeneity: Hardware, OS, Job mix 

• Agility: Prioritization of tasks in changing 

environment. Resource management 

able by applications 

the level required for DoD 

mission software 

steerable by applications 

• Performance/Availability: Guarantees on 

latency, bandwidth, capacity. 

field 

www 

reports 

Scheduler 

App 1 

App 2 

App 3 

Cloud T 

Scheduler 

Approved for Public Release, Distribution Unlimited 

App 1 

Machine monitor 

‘visor Tenant 

3/14/2011 6 

A5.2 Example funding opportunity: UK Government GBP 650 million cyber security 

initiative 

In October 2010, the UK government pledged to invest over £500m to boost critical national infrastructure

and improve cybersecurity as part of its five-year defence plan, the Strategic Defence and Security Review 

(SDSR) [56]. This figure was later set at £650m [87], [88]. The £650m will go towards the National Cyber 

Security Programme (NCSP), a series of projects designed to enhance unity of action against cyber threats 

across government, the private sector, individuals and international entities [87]. 

Ian McGhie, deputy director of the Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance (Ocsia), said that

GCHQ will plug some of the money into the 'Five Eyes' forum [87], which consists of the UK, US, Canada, 

Australia and New Zealand. 

The UK Centre for Defence Enterprise, the UK Ministry of Defence’s gateway for science and technology for 

industry, academia and innovators, has made a call for research proposals for Trustworthy Digital systems 

[89]. The call opens 13 July 2011 and closes Tuesday 13th September 2011 [89]. 

This CDE call is for research proposals for innovative software developments in digital systems and 

information communication technology that [89]: 

4.	 Define future architectures and interfaces that enable a comprehensive approach through open,

dynamic, trustworthy sharing of information and services across systems, organisations and nations. 

5.	 Enable assurance of mission critical, safety critical and secure Digital capabilities to high

levels. 

Synaptic Labs anticipates TruSIP will be directly relevant to point 2 above, and the following identified issue

[89]: 

Response to “... the spectrum of technological threats and opportunities in a timely 

manner ... in support of ... the longer-term requirements of future capability.” 

Additional information about the call will be made available by the CDE call after July 13. 

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

A6. Synaptic Labs’ continues to align our R&D proposals to the community’s calls 

In Europe and the U.S.A governments and agencies have openly published several high priority objectives,

identifying open hard challenges that they feel need to be addressed, to improve the trustworthiness and

dependability of our interconnected and interdependent computing systems. These publications are

employed to constantly guide and refine Synaptic Labs’ designs and proposals. Publications include: 

•	 U.S Office of the White House 

–	 U.S. 60 day Cyberspace Policy Review (2009) [39] 

•	 U.S. Federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) [12] 

–	 Federal Plan for Advanced Networking Research and Development (2008) [40] 

–	 National Cyber Leap Year Summit (NCLY) Proceedings (2009) [26], [41], [42] 

–	 Cybersecurity R&D Themes Webcast (2010) [6] 

•	 U.S. Department of Homeland Security [43] 

–	 A Roadmap for Cybersecurity Research (2009) [44] 

•	 U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology [45] 

–	 Cryptographic key management workshop summary. Interagency Report 7609 (June 2009) [31] 

–	 Guide to Industrial Control Systems (ICS) Security. Special Publication (Draft) 800-82 (2008) [46] 

–	 Guidelines for Smart Grid Cyber Security. Interagency Report 7628 (Sep. 2010) [47] 

•	 EU FP6 SecurIST Advisory Board [48] 

–	 Recommendations for a Security and Dependability Research Framework: from Security and 

Dependability by Central Command and Control to Security and Dependability by Empowerment [49] 

–	 ICT Security and Dependability Research beyond 2010 - Final strategy (2007) [50] 

•	 European Network and Information Security Agency [51] 

–	 Cloud Computing - Benefits, Risks and Recommendations for Information Security (2009) [52] 

–	 Security & Resilience in Governmental Clouds (2011) [53] 

Singling out a few points that the TruSIP design addresses, the above papers are calling the community to: 

•	 SecurIST: Design user-centric systems that empower all stakeholders of a system [49] [50]. 

•	 DHS: Build scalable trustworthy ICT and industrial control systems [44]. 

•	 DHS, NITRD: Combat insider threats (including at the architectural level) [44], [41], [42]. 

•	 NITRD: Create digital immune systems that employ decentralised, layered security [42]. 

•	 DHS: Combat malware and botnets [44]. 

•	 DHS: Design privacy aware security [44]. 

•	 NSA: Ensure survivability and availability of critical security services [31]. 

•	 NIST: Address the known looming threat of code-breaking Quantum Computers [31]. 

•	 NIST+ENISA: Address the known problems that lower the trustworthiness of public clouds [52], [54]. 

Recently, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) Homeland Security 

Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) Cyber Security Division's (CSD) announced a Broad

Agency Announcement (BAA) for Fiscal Year 2011 to improve the security in both Federal networks and the

larger Internet with a budget of USD $40 million [55]. The TruSIP design addresses over 70 goals and

objectives listed in that DHS BAA 11-02 call, including the following small sample [55]: 

•	 Protect against insiders compromising integrity, availability, and total system survivability. 

•	 Employ redundancy with assurance to make sure that single points of failure are not present. 

•	 Employ technologies that safely tolerate malware (safe transactions in unsafe systems). 

•	 Implement intrinsically auditable systems that are, by design, instrumented for detection. 

•	 React and recover, including changing the system during operation to break adversarial planning. 

•	 Promote an environment where individuals have “ownership” of their personal data, are aware of its 

provenance, and control its authenticated and authorized distribution, use, destruction with improved

understanding of the economic value of such data. (Echoes EU calls for user-centric empowerment
 

[50].)
 

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“We must find more effective ways to tackle risks to our national security ... to identify

risks early and treat the causes, rather than having to deal with the consequences.” 

– U.K. 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review [56] 

A7. What is TruSIP 

A7.1 A very high-level description of the TruSIP architecture 

TruSIP is a new fault-tolerant computing architecture designed to maintain uniform Confidentiality, Integrity 

and Availability under intrusion and insider attacks, under the explicit assumption that every module in the 

TruSIP deployment has a latent vulnerability and/or embedded malware. TruSIP is designed from the

ground up as a cryptographic project exploiting existing standards and employs a combination of logical and

physical security controls. 

TruSIP has been explicitly designed to address problems raised by the U.S Department of Homeland

Security [44], the U.S. Federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development [41], 

[42], U.S. National Institutes of Standards and Technologies [46] and the European Network Information

Security Agency [52] (ENISA) with regard to secure computing and insider attacks. 

<< REDACTED, further information available under NDA upon request >> 

A7.2 Techniques used in TruSIP 

Similar to other computing solutions that offer fail-safe and non-stop, TruSIP employs redundant computation

of client tasks to provide the necessary integrity and availability assurances against benign faults. Unlike 

most traditional fail-safe and non-stop solutions, TruSIP is also designed to resist malicious faults in any 

software or hardware module of a TruSIP deployment. See appendix A8.2 for more information. 

To achieve enhanced isolation security properties while maintaining excellent resource efficiency, the 

hardware variant of the TruSIP proposal hardens (one or more) commercial-off-the-shelf processor cores 

using a range of innovative techniques. See appendix A7.4 for more information. 

<< REDACTED, further information available under NDA upon request >> 

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

“The business case for cloud computing is obvious – it’s computing on tap, available 

instantly, commitment-free and on-demand. But the number one issue holding many

people back is security – how can I know if it’s safe to trust the cloud provider with my

data and in some cases my entire business infrastructure?” 

– Giles Hogben, an ENISA expert and editor of the ENISA cloud risks report (2009) [57]. 

A7.3 TruSIP will support and enhance today’s mainstream technologies 

Synaptic Labs has begun reaching out and working with leading technology companies to validate and 

ensure that TruSIP can cost-efficiently enhance and support their technology portfolio, as well as grow their 

respective markets. 

The TruSIP architecture is being designed to offer security hardened virtual machines optimised for two

types of message passing architecture: 

2.	 Security enhanced hypervisor for running Xen paravirtualization compliant operating systems with full

memory management unit (MMU) and multi-core support. 

3.	 Security enhanced microkernel with support for fine-grain security controls on every isolated address 

space. TruSIP will offer optional multi-core support in each isolated address space. 

The first type of TruSIP message passing architecture is optimised for delivering Infrastructure as a Service

(IaaS) where as the second type of message passing is optimised for delivering Platform as a Service

(Paas). 

Variants of TruSIP will support: 

•	 Today’s processor instruction sets: 

•	 Near term: SPARC v8, ARM low-end, MIPS 

•	 Mid term: x86, Itanium, SPARC v9, ARM high-end 

•	 Today’s operating systems: 

•	 Near term: Xen paravirtualization compliant OS such as Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, ... 

•	 Mid term: HP-UX, Windows, OS/X, QNX, SafeRTOS, OIS PCSexpress. 

•	 Today’s middleware 

•	 Java, Java Enterprise Edition 

•	 CORBA 

•	 Today’s business and mission critical software running on the above mentioned platforms. 

A7.4 TruSIP hardens existing CPU architectures 

Isolation between applications and virtual machines is a universally important security feature. The need for 

stricter isolation between virtual machines in public clouds was identified by ENSIA’s report on cloud

computing [52] as an important security requirement currently unmet by today’s cloud solutions. 

In today’s private and public clouds, virtual machines share the CPU and memory subsystems in a way that

enables unwanted crosstalk and interference between virtual machine instances [58]. This occurs because 

the low-level computer and CPU architectures have been designed to maximise throughput at the cost of 

lowered security assurances. 

To achieve significantly stronger isolation security properties while maintaining excellent resource efficiency,

the hardware variant of the TruSIP proposal hardens (one or more) commercial-off-the-shelf processor cores 

using a range of innovative techniques. Further information available under NDA upon request. 

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

A8 TruSIP’s performance 

A8.1 Comparing the performance and efficiency of TruSIP against the nearest competitor 

in the security space 

A distinguishing feature of Synaptic Labs’ TruSIP proposal is that it enables clients to securely send client

software and data into a device managed by a 3rd party in such a way that none of the technical or managerial

administrators of that device, or the privileged persons involved in the design, implementation or maintenance

of any of the components used by that device, can unilaterally learn the value of the client’s data. 

The closest competing proposals to achieve this property are based on the relatively new fully homomorphic 

encryption schemes. Fully homomorphic encryption, if it could be efficiently realised, is considered ideal for 

ensuring client confidentiality in public cloud computing systems [2]. 

In 2009, Craig Gentry showed [61] the first [62] fully homomorphic encryption scheme [60]. This scheme is 

impractical for many applications because the ciphertext size and computation time increase sharply as one

increases the security level. For example, performing a Google search process with encrypted keywords 

would multiply the necessary computing time by around 1 trillion, Gentry estimates [63]. Unlike TruSIP, 

current fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) schemes cannot be used to provide a hardened hypervisor for 

running existing operating systems because they do not efficiently support a general purpose CPU based

architecture. TruSIP’s ability to efficiently protect existing operating systems and software will make

TruSIP far more attractive than FHE schemes for the vast majority of organisations and applications. 

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has taken a serious interest in Gentry's 

fully homomorphic encryption scheme as part of it’s Broad Agency Announcement PROCEED project [7].

The U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) has also issued an independent Broad

Agency Announcement to find practical fully homomorphic encryption solutions [64]. DARPA has earmarked 

USD 20 million over 5 years into a project with a primary focus to improve the performance of FHE [8] to only 

100,000x computationally more expensive that unencrypted computing [7]. We note that according to 

DARPA, “[ed: Currently] Computation on encrypted data preserves the confidentiality of the data being 

computed on, but does not inherently protect the integrity of the computation, nor provide strong protection of 

the program, among other potentially desirable security goals.” [7] 

By way of comparison TruSIP, when implemented in hardware, is only approximately 2.5x to 3.5x 

computationally more expensive than unencrypted computing for fail safe and non-stop applications 

respectively. Another advantage of TruSIP over current Fully Homomorphic Encryption schemes is that

TruSIP provides strong confidentiality protection for the client’s program by default. 

With regard to winning international acceptance, all Fully Homomorphic Encryption proposals result in the

creation of a new public key encryption algorithm. Based on historical precedence with schemes such as 

elliptic curve cryptography, due to their complexity, all new public key encryption schemes necessarily 

require many years (and sometimes more than a decade) of international cryptanalysis by the open

community to win sufficient trust for it to be broadly used in the community. In sharp contrast, TruSIP draws 

extensively on existing and accepted standards based information security techniques. By relying on

internationally trusted components, and by using a formal methods development process, TruSIP will 

dramatically simplify the external cryptanalysis process required to win acceptance, meaning that TruSIP can

be more readily adopted by the community/market. 

In short, TruSIP is designed to be a commercially relevant solution that can be adopted both rapidly, and at

low cost, by the marketplace to address today’s real-world concerns. 

Side Note: TruSIP can be deployed in a manner that uses techniques widely considered resilient against 

anticipated quantum computing attacks. This problem is gaining increased attention as quantum computers 

grow in size such as the 2010 sale of a 128 Qubit system by DWave Systems to Lockheed Martin.

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

A8.2 Comparing the performance and efficiency of TruSIP with systems that employ 

double and triple modular redundancy 

All higher safety, higher availability computing systems employ redundancy. For example, enterprise 

storage systems frequently use Redundant Array of Indexed Drives (RAID) technologies. Enterprise 

computers often use hot swappable N+1 power supply configurations. Today, some high-end Intel server 

chipsets also offer double modular redundant memory to protect against SDRAM module failures. 

In industrial control systems it is not uncommon to find double modular redundant configurations used to 

ensure safety under benign faults. In these systems, the output of the two identical modules are checked 

for consensus to ensure a fault in any one module is detected. These systems typically call both redundant 

modules at the same time, which means that the time to run double modular systems is roughly the same 

speed as just calling one module. Not surprisingly, these systems require at least 2x the computation of 

systems that do not employ redundancy. 

In aerospace systems, it is not uncommon to find triple modular redundant configurations used to ensure 

availability under benign faults. In these systems, the majority of 2 out of 3 identical modules outputs is 

taken as the correct value. This ensures that the aircraft remains operational during an arbitrary fault in any 

of the redundant components. These systems require (at least 2x computation under fault-free operation

and normally) 3x the computation of systems that do not employ redundancy. 

Double modular and triple modular configurations have been used in commercial high-availability solutions, 

such as Hewlett Packards’ Integrity non-stop servers. In this case, modular redundancy is used to achieve

availability against benign component failures in a redundant processor. Again, because the redundant

execution of tasks occurs in parallel, these systems run only a little slower than if just one processor was 

used. 

There are many other different ways in which redundancy can be employed [65], [66], [67], [68], [69]. 

Based on Synaptic Labs’ survey of over 150+ publications in the trustworthy and dependable computing

space, and the expert opinion of our collaborators who are industry veterans in this space, we can say with

confidence that the TruSIP architecture, which also includes a new and innovative adaption of a range

of well-understood redundancy techniques, results in important new capabilities. 

On account of this redundant computation, TruSIP requires at least 2x and 3x computational overhead over 

unencrypted computing systems that do not use redundancy to deliver safety or availability assurances 

respectively. We conservatively describe our overhead as ~2.5x and ~3.5x to take into account the circuitry 

required for cryptographic operations and support logic. However, similar to some other systems that

employ double or triple modular redundancy, the TruSIP architecture is only a little slower at executing a

client task than when executing that task on a single processor. 

To place TruSIP’s small speed penalty for a single thread into a commercial context, the business model of

‘Infrastructure as a Service’ providers involves multiplexing/sharing the resources of a high-end server chip

to several clients. IaaS providers such as Amazon Web Services lease virtual machine instances that run

up to 3 times slower than one CPU core used in the multi-core server. Clearly, a slight reduction in singlethread top-speed in TruSIP to accommodate the value-add properties of high-confidentiality and highavailability in TruSIP will not act as a significant barrier in the IaaS market. TruSIP, like other IaaS offerings,

is designed to support multi-core configurations to deliver increased computing power and responsiveness to

every virtual machine instance. 

Further information available under NDA upon request.

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

A8.3 Comparing the performance of TruSIP and conventional hardware security modules 

The TruSIP proposal is designed to employ hardware security modules [70]. Hardware security modules 

typically employ physical security controls to provide tamper evidence, resistance, and sometimes defensive

response against physical attacks. Hardware security modules come in many sizes and form factors.

Smart cards are an example of one of the most common forms of hardware security module. 

Typically high-performance hardware security modules use commercial off the shelf processors found in

general purpose computing designs. For this reason, hardware security modules offer performance 

comparable to general purpose computing designs using the same general purpose processor. 

The hardware security modules in TruSIP securely receive client data in authenticated encrypted form,

decrypt that data inside the hardware security module, perform an arbitrary number of operations on the

decrypted data, and send the final result back to the client in authenticated encrypted form. 

Even though TruSIP uses hardware security modules TruSIP does not rely on them behaving honestly 

towards the client. For example, TruSIP is designed to protect the client from exfiltration attacks by 

hardware security module vendors. That is, where the HSM tries to leak the client’s sensitive data. Today, 

a `trusted' network attached hardware security module could be easily designed to exfiltrate sensitive key 

materials to the attacker using an undetectable [71] covert timing channel [72]. For example, the hardware

security module can modulate the pace and timing of network traffic packets sent over the Internet in a way 

that encodes key material or client secrets. The attacker will be able to decode the message encoded in the

timing of the packets, with the attack going undetected by everybody else. If the hardware security module

vendor is based in a foreign country, that vendor may have no choice but to install such hidden backdoors 

against their international clients. 

TruSIP is explicitly designed to address this real-world threat by employing various innovative security 

controls and protocols in the TruSIP architecture that are designed to either expose or prevent (private or 

public) network based covert channel attacks. 

In fact, TruSIP is designed to deliver countermeasures against attacks involving a subversive collusion

between the hardware security module vendor and the public cloud provider! 

The ability for proposed TruSIP deployments to protect against these and other types of insider attacks 

uniquely positions TruSIP to address trustworthiness and dependability problems that hinder the level of

adoption of public clouds. 

In fact, TruSIP offers the potential to bolster the security of public clouds beyond what is possible today in

private clouds. This is why we argue that TruSIP may not just revolutionise the public cloud computing

market, but capture a large market share of the private cloud market as well. 

Further information available under NDA upon request.

A8.4 Comparing the power efficiency of TruSIP and commodity processors 

As indicated in appendix A7.4 TruSIP hardens existing CPU architectures to provide the necessary (currently 

missing) security controls to address insider attacks and enable secure public cloud computing and harden

the security TruSIP in all other applications. 

As indicated in appendix A8.2 TruSIP also innovative employs double or triple modular redundancy as 

required to achieve fail-safe or high-availability modes of operation. 

This raises the question of power efficiency and total cost of ownership. For example, is TruSIP going to

have a 2.5x to 3.5x larger power bill than today’s COTS server processors? 

Today’s commercial processors range significantly in their power efficiency to execute any given program. 

There are several reasons for this, but first we will cite a publication comparing two competing processors 

advertising “low-power” properties. According to a paper [73] published by the University of Texas at Dallas 

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

titled: “ARM Cortex-A8 vs. Intel Atom: Architectural and Benchmark Comparisons”, there is a 6x power 

consumption difference per Dhrystone Million Instructions per Second (DMIPS) between ARM Cortex-A8

processor and the low power Intel Atom processor. 

Simply speaking, the ARM Cortex A-8 processor can perform 6 operations for every 1 operation performed

by the Intel Atom, even though the ARM processor is manufactured on an older (more power hungry) 

semiconductor technology. Intel have designed their processor in a way that consumes 6x more power in 

exchange for the ability to execute single thread tasks faster than the ARM processor. 

Speaking simply, CPU cores frequently stall while waiting for the value of some memory location to arrive

from outside the CPU chip. Whereas the ARM processor is more inclined to wait patiently for the value to

arrive, the Intel processor is more likely to run ahead and try and “guess” the value before it arrives. If the 

guess is right, Intel’s chip can use the calculations based on that guess, otherwise the Intel processor has to 

throw away all that work. In any event, this means the Intel chip will either be as fast as, or faster than, the

ARM processor at every step. But Intel achieve this at the cost of a larger, more complex, more expensive

circuit to implement the acceleration techniques, and that circuit consumes more power than a simpler 

circuit. 

It is widely accepted that the reason why Intel and other chip manufactures employ aggressive techniques to 

improve single thread performance is that there is a high value segment in the processor market (computer 

gamers, graphics designers) that will pay top dollar to achieve the absolutely highest performance for a

single thread. That market is not typically concerned with security or maximum power efficiency. It is also 

widely recognised that ARM processors offer slower performance but lower power consumption. ARM 

processors are dominant in mobile phone markets where maximising battery life is important. 

In the context of achieving a computing platform that balances security and performance objectives, based

on the above figures, TruSIP could use a modified ARM Cortex-A8 processor in a double or triple

modular redundant configuration and still be more power efficient per instruction than Intel’s Atom 

chip! 

In public cloud contexts, where we must consider the total cost of ownership, including initial purchase cost 

and ongoing power consumption, TruSIP will be engineered to exploit the best price/performance/power 

sweet-spot at the time of development. We believe a TruSIP implementation that balances these properties 

will appeal to the broadest market place on account of it’s increased security properties. 

To achieve lower power consumption across all applications, including mobile, we employ 3-D IC techniques 

to win a number of advantages including improve total system power efficiency as described in appendix 

A8.5.

A8.5 TruSIP performance and efficiency when using advanced ASIC techniques 

Further information available under NDA upon request. 

“We have to, again, assume that all the components of our system are not safe, and 

make sure we're adjusting accordingly” 

– Debora Plunkett, Director of the Information Assurance Directorate 

at the US National Security Agency, December 2010

A9. Kill switch resistance 

TruSIP is designed to manage both benign and maliciously introduced faults. In particular, certain 

configurations of TruSIP are designed to continue operating in the presence of an activated kill switch in any 

software or hardware module. More specifically, TruSIP is designed to survive every instance of that

compromised module in a TruSIP deployment having it's kill switch activated simultaneously! 

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

We will now quote two sources that outline the market drivers that have led Synaptic Labs to design TruSIP 

in a way that could provide end-to-end protection against kill switches. 

According to a NIST publication [47]: 

“maintaining the resiliency and continuous availability of the power grid itself as a critical 

national infrastructure is an important mandate” 

furthermore: 

“... the unique nature of the electrical grid is that it supplies key elements toward the well-being 

of these other critical infrastructure elements. And additionally, there are reverse dependencies 

emerging on Smart Grid being dependent on the continuous well-being of the 

telecommunications and digital computing infrastructure, as well as on the continuing flow of the 

raw materials to generate the power. These interdependencies are sometimes highly visible 

and obvious, but many remain hidden below the surface of the detailed review for each. There 

is little current understanding of the cascading effect outages and service interruptions might 

have, especially those of a malicious and judiciously placed nature with intent to cause 

maximum disruption and mass chaos.” 

According to P. Strassmann [74], a 1993 recipient of the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service - 

the U.S. Defense Department's highest civilian recognition [79]: 

“One of the major cyber threats to organizations that require high levels of security is the 

chance that commodity microprocessors, currently manufactured in places without adequate 

security oversight and inspection, may be installed into its servers. Such microprocessors 

would come with “back-door” openings already installed. 

A longstanding fear has been that cyber attacks against the U.S. might result in disruptions to 

power, banking, and communications systems at a critical moment. Efforts by the Defense 

Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to improve verification capabilities highlight the 

limitations of current computer engineering skills in, for example, diagnosing cyber intrusions. 

Initial studies on the Trusted Integrated Circuit program, seeking to create a secure supply

chain, were requested in 2007. As of late 2010, DARPA was still seeking new research 

proposals for determining whether a given chip was reliable, and whether it had been 

maliciously modified, as part of the Integrity and Reliability of Integrated Circuits (IRIS) program. 

A more recent worry is vulnerabilities “hardwired” into the physical infrastructure of the Internet. 

In the last several years, the FBI has warned that counterfeit computer parts and systems may 

be widespread. A growing concern is that a few countries that now manufacture most of the 

commodity microcircuits, can exploit their position to affect American and allied infrastructures. 

The 2005 Defense Science Board Task Force on High Performance Microchip Supply identified 

the growing security problem of microchips being manufactured (and more and more often 

designed) outside the United States.” 

TruSIP has been designed to address the above concerns while opening up and capturing vast new markets 

that are not adequately addressed by the competition. See also appendix A14. 

A10. The current development status of TruSIP 

As of June 2011, TruSIP is at the design and specifications stage. We have completed the process of

describing how the topology of our architecture, and certain software and hardware techniques, will be used

to achieve the overall security goals of the platform. We have explored a range of techniques to control the 

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

implementation and running costs of TruSIP. TruSIP is now actively undergoing it's second stage of 

independent analysis. 

TruSIP is working with potential funding bodies and collaborators to identify the first application space for 

TruSIP e.g. do we target kill switch resistance in the first design, do we aim for embedded micro or servers 

first, and so on. With a selected target market, development path and funding approach in mind, we will

then be moving into a more formal specifications and development process. Where possible our goal is to 

ensure the analysis and development done in any part or stage of the design can be readily reused. We 

are in the process of actively engaging with Governments and Industry in E.U. and U.S. to identify their highpriority targets to guide the selection of our first target design to implement. 

A11. Comparing TruSIP with other proposals funded by Governments 

A11.1 Comparing TruSIP with the EU FP7 / IBM TClouds Project (2010 -2013) 

TClouds [65] is an EU FP7 funded cloud project that includes researchers from IBM Research, Philips 

Electronics Nederland, and Technische Universität Darmstadt. Phase 1 (2010 -2013) has a project cost of
 

€10,536,129.00 and was funded €7,500,000.00 through the EU FP7.
 

The stated mission of TClouds [65] is to:
 

1. develop an advanced cloud infrastructure that can deliver computing and storage that achieves a

new level of security, privacy, and resilience yet is cost-efficient, simple, and scalable; and 

2. change the perceptions of cloud computing by demonstrating the prototype infrastructure in socially 

significant application areas: energy and healthcare. 

One of the technical objectives is to create a “A Trustworthy Infrastructure Cloud enables individual providers 

to offer more resilient and privacy-aware infrastructure clouds.” We note they do not go as far as to say that

their objective is for individual providers to be able to offer privacy preserving cloud services. Their next 

technical objective is to achieve “Privacy and Resilience for Commodity Clouds” by enabling “end users to 

put a security layer on top of existing commodity infrastructure clouds to enforce their security objectives.” 

This security layer, or “framework will provide multiple back-ups of the TClouds data and applications in case 

of a hardware failure or intrusion”. 

In the table found below on the next page we compare some of the publicly available literature on the EU 

FP7 TClouds project with some of the properties of Synaptic Labs’ TruSIP proposal when implemented in

hardware (FPGA or ASIC):

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EU FP7 TClouds (€10.5 m) TruSIP (FPGA, ASIC) 

Strategy Create new middleware that sits on top of 

existing cloud systems 

Address the core security problems at the 

hardware level up (a software only proposal 

is available for smart cards) 

Compatibility Entirely new software must be written to 

run on the middleware 

Many existing applications and operating 

systems can be recompiled and run on our 

platform without change 

Privacy against

cloud provider 

No controls to prevent the cloud provider 

from learning the value of data sent to it 

Prevents the cloud provider learning the 

value of any client data 

Manage risks 

Split program over private (trusted) clouds 

and less trusted clouds, use Byzantine 

agreement programming approaches 

Use a system of separation of powers and 

checks-and-balances implemented inside 

each TruSIP device 

Performance Byzantine fault resistant programs are slow, 

particularly over the Internet 

A little slower than the general purpose 

processors used inside TruSIP 

End-to-end No mention of securing smart sensors, 

embedded micros, work stations, ... 

Targeted to embedded micro, workstation, 

and clouds in real-time, industrial control 

and ICT contexts for ubiquitous ‘end to end 

‘ security in systems of systems 

 

 

TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

A11.2 Comparing TruSIP with the DARPA BAA 10-70, Clean-slate design of Resilient,

Adaptive, Secure Hosts (CRASH) (2010-active) 

The currently active Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) CRASH project solicited

proposals in 2010 [75] for innovative research into the design of new computer systems that: 

1. Are highly resistant to cyber-attack; 

2. Can adapt after a successful attack in order to continue rendering useful services; 

3. Learn from previous attacks how to guard against and cope with future attacks; and 

4. Can repair themselves after attacks have succeeded. 

Based on the DARPA presentations made to industry, the CRASH project [75] appears to be based around

the TIARA [78] tag processor. The TIARA tag processor assumes that the hardware can be trusted to

behave honestly with regard to the client / stakeholders. The TIARA processor does not appear to address 

kill switches embedded in the processor, nor does it appear to address the exfiltration of data through value,

covert storage, or covert timing channel attacks. 

In contrast Synaptic Lab’s TruSIP is designed to address insider attacks and kill switches, and therefore

appears to exceed the scope of the DARPA CRASH project in this respect. In principle the TruSIP project

will support mainstream commercial processor architectures in use today, and therefore we expect that we

could enhance the TIARA/CRASH CPU deliverables to enhance its security for use in private/public cloud

computing environments. Also see appendix A5.1

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

A11.3 Comparing TruSIP with the DARPA AFRL-IF-RS-TR-2006-237 (2006) 

This DARPA project’s goals were to increase intrusion tolerance via scalability redundancy [66]: 

“The project worked toward dramatically increasing the scalability of fault- and intrusion-tolerant 

services, particularly in the efficiency of tolerating significant numbers of failures and 

compromises. This project has built upon foundational work laid in two previous, independent 

and concurrent DARPA projects: Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) PASIS 

project for implementing survivable data storage, and Advance Technology Office (ATO) Fleet 

project for implementing an intrusion-tolerant object-oriented system, integrating the lessons 

and advances of these individual projects as a basis for further innovation.” 

Among other things, the U.S. DARPA / U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) project developed

protocols for highly resilient distributed object-based systems that offer linearizable method invocations, 

including nested invocations in which one object is invoked by another, where some replicas of each may be 

corrupt. 

The DARPA / AFRL project makes no claim of maintaining confidentiality of data under intrusion. 

In contrast, Synaptic Laboratories' TruSIP platform will support a distributed object-based system (Platform 

as a Service) that supports confidentiality of sensitive data managed by the objects, even when under 

intrusion. 

A11.4 Comparing TruSIP with the Malicious-and Accidental-Fault Tolerance for Internet

Applications (MAFTIA) project (2003) 

MAFTIA was a European IST Research Project IST-1999-11583 [67] that ran from 1 January 2000 to 28

February 2003. MAFTIA [67] describes fault tolerant schemes that employ trusted hardware security 

modules in each compute element. MAFTIA deliverables make no claim of maintaining confidentiality of 

sensitive data under intrusion. 

In contrast Synaptic Labs' TruSIP: 

1.	 Does NOT rely on the absolute trustworthiness of hardware security modules or trusted platform 

modules. Instead it employs a system of checks and balances to protect against malware in any 

software or hardware component. 

2.	 Maintains confidentiality if the chip, hypervisor, operating system, or hardware security modules 

processing sensitive client data have latent faults or embedded malware that is exploited to exfiltrate

data through value faults, covert storage channels or covert timing channels. 


 

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

A11.5 Comparing TruSIP with the DARPA Scalable Intrusion Tolerant ARchitecture

(SITAR) - 2003 

The DARPA SITAR project [68] was designed to provide high-availability, intrusion resistant delivery of web 

pages using unmodified commercial of the shelf web servers and hardware. SITAR employed N-variant

software diversity with N-redundancy to detect and survive network borne vulnerability exploits against an

array of N-variant COTS web servers. 

In the paper [69] studying the security properties of SITAR it is claimed that “Systems based on the SITAR 

architecture can recover from security attacks that may otherwise result in loss of availability, integrity or 

confidentiality automatically through redundancy and diversity.” 

However there is insufficient information to determine which security attacks are addressed within SITAR.

For example that paper [69] specifically : 

1. Does not qualify the level or extent of the confidentiality properties in SITAR. 

2. Does not consider covert storage / timing channel attacks. 

3. Does not consider physical / network side-channel attacks. 

4. Does not consider insider attacks by the administrators / software vendors / hardware vendors. 

In contrast, Synaptic Labs’ TruSIP addresses all the above points. The goals and objectives of TruSIP far 

exceed those of SITAR. 

A12. Cloud market size in 2011 and projected for 2020 

According to a report on sizing the cloud [80] by Forrester Research (2011): 

Market 2011 2020

Public cloud USD 25.5B USD 159.3B 

Virtual private cloud USD 7.5B USD 66.4B 

Private cloud USD 7.8B USD 15.9B 

( intentionally left blank for formatting purposes )

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

A13. Primary reasons for not using cloud services 

DARPA pointed [86] to a research report on Cloud Governance, Risk and Compliance [84] by 

InformationWeek Analytics (July 2009) where 38% of respondents (208 out of 548 surveyed) said that they 

would not use the cloud. 

Of those 208 who would not use the cloud, 53% cited security related issues as the primary reason for not 

adopting the cloud. The high-level break down of issues identified in that survey is as follows: 

Security concerns dominate both cloud adopters and non-adopters with 

“... 51% of CIOs surveyed ... cited security as their greatest concern surrounding cloud adoption.” 

as reported in a keynote transcript at the RSA conference March 2010 [85]. 

Recent Cloud Reports from ENISA [2], NIST [90, 91, 92] and the Cloud Security Alliance [93] perform 

indepth survey’s listing the unresolved security issues. TruSIP specifically resolves many of these issues.

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

A14. Market spaces that can be targeted by different variants of TruSIP 

TruSIP can be implemented incrementally with varying levels of up-front non-recurring expenses, enabling 

an incremental approach into the market. Both the software and hardware variants have security controls 

against insider and outsider attacks. The hardware version of the TruSIP proposal offers a range of superior 

capabilities including enhanced auditing capabilities, stronger isolation between tasks, support for Xen

paravirtualization operating systems and significantly improved overall-performance. In principle the FPGA

and ASIC versions of the system should have the same functionality, but of course the ASIC version will 

Fear of unuathorised access to or leak of our proprietary information

Fear of unauthorised access to or leak of our customer’s information 

Security defects in the technology itself

Features and general maturity of the technology

Unpredictable costs

Business viability of provider; risk company will fail

Vendor Lock in 

Application System Performance

Other 

have far higher throughput and responsiveness than the FPGA solution. All software and hardware versions 

can support either fail-safe or non-stop modes of operation. In principle software variants could implement 

availability under the activation of a kill switch in any module, however we prefer to offer that feature for 

FPGA/ASIC variants. 

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

Sw/Hw Device Applications and Markets 

Software Smart cards Examples: Two factor authentication (Personal identity management and 

cryptographic key management token); Technical safeguards for 

protecting very small amounts of privacy or commercially sensitive

information and low transaction rates (pin numbers, passwords, email

account details, visa card details, performing online e-commerce

transactions, other financial information). 

Software Network 

attached HSM 

Examples: Technical safeguards for protecting small to medium amounts 

of privacy or commercially sensitive information (pin numbers, passwords,

email account details, visa card details, performing online e-commerce

transactions, other financial information). Suitable for running some Java

business applications on a scalable Platform as a Service system.

Markets include business, financial, medical. 

Hardware

Phase 1 

FPGA + 

optionally 

structured ASIC 

Examples: Suitable for embedded micro, industrial control devices, 

industrial control workstation, public and private TruSIP cloud computing.

Markets include business, financial, medical, industrial, personal, cloud, ... 

Hardware 3-D IC Widest market penetration with lowest per unit cost, supporting highPhase 2 (ASIC)

1 variant with 

low memory 

1 variant with 

high memory 

volume commodity use in embedded micro, smart sensors/actuators,

industrial control systems, safety systems, mobile phones, tablets,

business workstations, full-scale private and public clouds. Markets 

include business, financial, medical, industrial, applications in the home,

private and public cloud, ultra-reliable high-end smart cards for critical 

infrastructure applications, ... 

END of Appendices

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TruSIP targets the highest safety and security levels in a unified, backwards compatible, computing platform 

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Several Icons used in this document are from the GNU LGPL Crystal Clear icon set by Everaldo Coelho. 

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