Related papers: Not quite a piece of CHERI-cake: Are new digital s…
CHERI (Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions) is a novel hardware designed to address memory safety issues. By replacing traditional pointers with hardware capabilities, it enhances security in modern software systems. A Virtual…
Protecting data in memory from attackers continues to be a concern in computing systems. CHERI is a promising approach to achieve such protection, by providing and enforcing fine-grained memory protection directly in the hardware. Creating…
There is growing interest in securing the hardware foundations software stacks build upon. However, before making any investment decision, software and hardware supply chain stakeholders require evidence from realistic, multiple long-term…
Capability machines such as CHERI provide memory capabilities that can be used by compilers to provide security benefits for compiled code (e.g., memory safety). The existing C to CHERI compiler, for example, achieves memory safety by…
MMU-less Linux variant lacks security because it does not have protection or isolation mechanisms. It also does not use MPUs as they do not fit with its software model because of the design drawbacks of MPUs (\ie coarse-grained protection…
Up to 10% of memory-safety vulnerabilities in languages like C and C++ stem from uninitialized variables. This work addresses the prevalence and lack of adequate software mitigations for uninitialized memory issues, proposing architectural…
Several open-source memory allocators have been ported to CHERI, a hardware capability platform. In this paper we examine the security and performance of these allocators when run under CheriBSD on Arm's experimental Morello platform. We…
CHERI-C extends the C programming language by adding hardware capabilities, ensuring a certain degree of memory safety while remaining efficient. Capabilities can also be employed for higher-level security measures, such as software…
This technical report describes a new extension to capability machines. Capability machines are a special type of processors that include better security primitives at the hardware level. In capability machines, every word has an associated…
Memory-unsafe programming languages such as C and C++ are the preferred languages for systems programming, embedded systems, and performance-critical applications. The widespread use of these languages makes the risk of memory-related…
CFI is a computer security technique that detects runtime attacks by monitoring a program's branching behavior. This work presents a detailed analysis of the security policies enforced by 21 recent hardware-based CFI architectures. The goal…
The widespread deployment of embedded systems in critical infrastructures, interconnected edge devices like autonomous drones, and smart industrial systems requires robust security measures. Compromised systems increase the risks of…
Nowadays, advanced security mechanisms exist to protect data, systems, and networks. Most of these mechanisms are effective, and security experts can handle them to achieve a sufficient level of security for any given system. However, most…
During our port of the MicroPython bytecode interpreter to the CHERI-based Arm Morello platform, we encountered a number of serious performance degradations. This paper explores several of these performance issues in detail, in each case we…
Memory corruption attacks have been prevalent in software for a long time. Some mitigation strategies against these attacks do exist, but they are not as far-reaching or as efficient as the CHERI architecture. CHERI uses capabilities to…
While the CHERI instruction-set architecture extensions for capabilities enable strong spatial memory safety, CHERI lacks built-in temporal safety, particularly for heap allocations. Prior attempts to augment CHERI with temporal safety fall…
The most important security benefit of software memory safety is easy to state: for C and C++ software, attackers can exploit most bugs and vulnerabilities to gain full, unfettered control of software behavior, whereas this is not true for…
Increasing number of cyber-attacks demotivate people to use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for industrial as well as day to day work. A main reason for the increasing number of cyber-attacks is mistakes that programmers make…
Systems modeling practice lacks security analysis tools that can interface with modeling languages to facilitate security by design. Security by design is a necessity in the age of safety critical cyber-physical systems, where security…
Security risk assessment is essential in establishing the trustworthiness and reliability of modern systems. While various security risk assessment approaches exist, prevalent applications are "pen and paper" implementations that -- even if…