Patent Application: US-201414330441-A

Abstract:
a pipelined processor comprising a cache memory system , fetching instructions for execution from a portion of said cache memory system , an instruction commencing processing before a digital signature of the cache line that contained the instruction is verified against a reference signature of the cache line , the verification being done at the point of decoding , dispatching , or committing execution of the instruction , the reference signature being stored in an encrypted form in the processor &# 39 ; s memory , and the key for decrypting the said reference signature being stored in a secure storage location . the instruction processing proceeds when the two signatures exactly match and , where further instruction processing is suspended or processing modified on a mismatch of the two said signatures .

Description:
an approach for authenticating program execution dynamically is to detect if the binaries of the executables are compromised during the execution . one way to do this is to detect that the instructions that are fetched and executed , as the program is running , are indeed the same instructions that are supposed to be fetched and executed . the executable code is broken down into contiguous chunks at the boundaries of the cache lines ( say , of size l ) at the lowermost on - chip cache level . if necessary , padding can be used at the end of the code to round its size up to a multiple of the cache line size at the lowest level cache . a signature is generated for each such line by simply generating a digest function d on smaller chunks of each such line , for example at 16 - bit or 32 - bit boundaries . thus , for each lowest level cache line &# 39 ; s worth of code ( say , li ), a specific signature ( say si , where si = d ( li )) is generated for that line . the signature si for each line li of the program &# 39 ; s authentic binary is then encoded using a secret key and stored in a separate array . this secret key can be stored within the tpm storage or , alternatively , a secure storage for such keys can be constructed using the tpm module ( which provides the root of trust ). as the program execution is started , on - chip cache misses are triggered in the course of fetching instructions . as each line holding the instruction that triggered the l1 i - cache miss is fetched into the lowest level cache , the corresponding encrypted signature is also retrieved . a digest for the line fetched , say lf , is then generated by applying the digest function , d , that is sf = d ( lf ) is computed . the encrypted signature of lf is then decoded and compared with the computed signature sf . if the decrypted signature matches sf , then we conclude that the original binaries were not tampered with , and are thus deemed verified . if the computed signature and decrypted signatures mismatch , an exception can be triggered or actions similar to that taken with the control flow validation mechanism can be triggered . in reality , as described in the implementation details below , the validation of the contents of a line will be deferred until an instruction located within that line commits . the security of this mechanism for authenticating a program execution at run - time makes the following implicit assumptions : 1 . once an instruction is fetched , it cannot be modified or replaced within the processor &# 39 ; s caches . 2 . the digest function d is sufficiently strong in generating a fairly unique signature for each lowest level cache line . put in other words , two different cache lines , containing two different sets of instructions cannot accidentally have the same signature except in rare circumstances , and preferably in a highly unpredictable manner . one way to do this is to combine the line &# 39 ; s virtual address with the cache line &# 39 ; s contents in deriving the unique signature for that cache line , while taking into account the predictability of the cache line address — such as consecutive line addresses differ by one , higher order bits in a line address are going to be similar or close , etc . 3 . if the contents of the cache lines are unaltered , control flow proceeds on expected paths . 4 . there is a secure mechanism for storing the key used for decrypting the cache line signatures . the various existing tpm infrastructures provide this ability . the performance overhead of the present mechanism is dependent on a number of things . first , hardware support is needed to compute the signature of a lowest level cache line as it is fetched . using a simple one - time pad , where the one time key is xored with the encrypted signature to decrypt it , can be a very efficient solution but the mechanism is open to all the vagaries of using a one - time pad . alternative mechanisms , albeit with a higher overhead , can be employed . any delay in decrypting the signatures can be avoided by fetching the signatures of a number of consecutive lower - level lines into the processor and decrypting them in advance , for example using a cryptographic or authentication coprocessor separate from the normal instruction processing flow of the main processor , but which may be integrated on the same chip . second , the signatures have to be stored in a manner that permits them to be fetched quickly as the cache lines themselves are being fetched . we now describe implementation details that takes into account the delays in both generating a signature from a line fetched into the lowest level cache as well as the delay involved in decrypting a precomputed encrypted signature for the cache line . assume that the lowest level cache line size is b bytes and the digest to be computed over q byte chunks of each such line , where b is an integer multiple of q and the digest of a line is also q bytes long . assume further that the executable module is n bytes long , starting at virtual address a and , for the sake of simplicity , that n is an integer multiple of b . the number of encrypted digests that we need to store for the executable is thus m =( n / b )* q . assume that these encrypted digests are stored contiguously in the order of the line addresses , starting at virtual memory address z . the virtual address of the encrypted digest for the memory line with the address x that is fetched into the lower level cache on a l1 i - cache miss is : a =(( x − a )/ b )* q + z . thus , given the address of a line , the address of its encoded digest can be easily located . the cache based dynamic authentication mechanism is implemented as shown in fig4 . the implementation takes into account two constraints . first , it takes into account the fact that the both the generation of the signature of the fetched cache line and the decryption of the stored signature for comparison against the decrypted signature are potentially slow operations that take multiple pipeline cycles . second , the signature of the line being fetched into the lowest level cache cannot be generated or generated and verified before that line is inserted into the cache and delivered to the fetch stage , as the time it takes to generate the signature or to fetch the encrypted signature from the signature table stored in the ram and decrypt it for comparison against the signature generated of the fetched cache line will prolong the effective cache miss handling time and adversely impact the instruction fetch and decode rate . according to an embodiment of the present technology , a set - associative structure called the cache line signature table ( cst ) is used to hold the entry for a lowest level cache line that was fetched on a l1 i - cache miss . this entry holds either the decrypted signature fetched from the ram or the generated signature , whatever is available earlier . additionally , this entry holds status information that indicates : ( b ) what is currently held in the entry — a generated signature or a decrypted signature ; ( c ) if the stored entity is a generated signature ( or a decrypted signature ) was compared against the decrypted signature ( or a generated signature ); and ( d ) the outcome of a match comparing the generated signature against a stored signature . these four states can be easily encoded using 2 bits . if the generated signature or the stored signatures are s bits long , each entry in the signature table is ( s + 2 ) bits wide . when either a generated signature or a decrypted signature arrives at the cst , and if the other entity being compared ( the decrypted signature or the generated signature , respectively ) is not available in the cst entry ( as seen from the status bits ), the first entity targeting the cst entry is simply stored within the cst and the status bits updated appropriately . otherwise , the comparison of the decrypted and generated signatures can be performed , and the result of the match stored in the status field . when an instruction is being committed , the signature table is probed to look for a matching entry . if a matching entry is found ( cst hit ), the instruction is committed as usual only if the matching entry indicates that the comparison of the decrypted signature and the stored signature was successful . if the signature comparison was performed and the generated signature did not match the decrypted signature , an exception is generated and the instruction is not committed . for all other conditions on a cst hit , the instruction commitment is held up , and this may result in a stall elsewhere in the pipeline . if at the time of committing an instruction , a cst miss occurred , the pipeline is flushed , treating the instruction being committed as a mispredicted branch . this is done to ensure that instructions from a lowest level cache whose signature may have been potentially unverified cannot be committed . two additional pipeline stages ( labeled a1 and a2 ) are added at the tail end of the pipeline , following the last pipeline stage that handles commitment ( labeled c ) to handle the cst lookup and associated activities described above . the normal commitment is delayed until the instructions are exiting from a2 . additional stages may be added if the cst lookup and activities require more than two cycles . these added stages , obviously , do not affect the instruction pipeline commitment stage in any way as they follow the stages that would perform commitment in a normal pipeline . on a miss at the lowest on - chip cache level that was triggered by a l1 i - cache miss , the missing line is fetched and handled as usual to satisfy the l1 i - cache miss . the signature table is probed to locate any matching entry in the table . if a matching entry is not found , it is allocated and initialized and pinned down until either the generated signature or the decrypted signature is written to the cst entry . note that in the worst case , if an entry cannot be allocated in the cst on a lowest level cache miss , because all the ways in the matching set within the cst are pinned , the cache miss handling stalls . if a matching entry is found , three cases arise : if the matching entry indicates that a match was performed and it resulted in a mismatch , the entry is left untouched . this is done to ensure that uncommitted instructions from the cache line will trigger an exception at the time of commitment . if the cst entry indicates that a match occurred , it is marked as a pending match to ensure that instructions from the version of the lowest level cache line that will now be fetched are also authenticated properly . if the matching entry in the cst indicates a pending match , no further actions are taken until the missing cache line is fetched . at that time , the cst is probed again and if the cst entry is still found as match pending , instruction dispatching is stalled until the pipeline drains . after the pipeline has drained , the cst entry is completely reset and instruction issue resumes with other activities that corresponded to a cst miss . the pipeline draining step assures that that the proposed authentication scheme detects if the newly fetched version of the cache line was altered since it was last fetched and used . another obvious way of altogether avoiding this corner case is to flush matching entries in the cst when corresponding lines are evicted from the lowest level cache , but this approach requires additional probes of the cst and takes a performance toll . on setting up a new cst entry ( or after marking an existing cst entry as match pending ), the signature of the fetched cache line is generated immediately after fetching the line . a memory request to fetch the encrypted signature is generated . in general , memory requests for handling cache misses take a precedence over memory requests for fetching encrypted signatures , but queued up memory requests for fetching encrypted signatures are given precedence over normal memory requests periodically to avoid livelocks . the size of the signature , the generating function , etc . can be programmable . these can be generated by a trusted authority and appropriate header extensions can be added to the binary of the executed code to : each library has its own signature and perhaps a separate secret key for decoding . as a control flow occurs , information is provided to the code ( or through the hardware ) to locate the dedicated secret key for the library . this mechanism could also be implemented as a software trap on attempts to branch to dlls . the handling of computer branches works the generally same way as dlls or branching within the same module . the signature of cache lines that contain the executed instructions can be verified . although specific embodiments have been illustrated and described herein , it will be appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art that any arrangement that achieve the same purpose , structure , or function may be substituted for the specific embodiments shown . this application is intended to cover any adaptations or variations of the example embodiments of the invention described herein . it is intended that this invention be limited only by the claims , and the full scope of equivalents thereof . 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