Security in the MPSoC Domain

We study the security impact of having multiple applications share the same MPSoC platform. Specifically, we analyse the physical characteristics of the platform; such as system temperature, power consumption, operating frequency e.t.c, and study whether these characteristics pose a security risk.

An example for such a security risk would be to establish a covert channel and overcome application isolation. Application isolation is a widely used security paradigm in modern systems, which simply means that applications are isolated from each other so they cannot leak confidential information without the user’s knowledge. If an attacker is able to infiltrate those applications and set up a covert channel, it would be possible to leak confidential data without the knowledge of the user. We have already shown that this is possible using thermal information and we are now looking into other possibilities to apply this attack scheme.

Another security risk is the inference of tasks by monitoring physical properties of the system. In this scenario, an attacker could learn what the user is doing by observing physical characteristics of the system and use this information to generate extensive user profiles.