A Practical Encrypted Microprocessor

Peter T. Breuer, Jonathan P. Bowen, Esther Palomar, Zhiming Liu

2016

Abstract

This paper explores a new approach to encrypted microprocessing, potentiating new trade-offs in security versus performance engineering. The coprocessor prototype described runs standard machine code (32-bit OpenRISC v1.1) with encrypted data in registers, on buses, and in memory. The architecture is ‘superscalar’, executing multiple instructions simultaneously, and is sophisticated enough that it achieves speeds approaching that of contemporary off-the-shelf processor cores. The aim of the design is to protect user data against the operator or owner of the processor, and so-called ‘Iago’ attacks in general, for those paradigms that require trust in data-heavy computations in remote locations and/or overseen by untrusted operators. A single idea underlies the architecture, its performance and security properties: it is that a modified arithmetic is enough to cause all program execution to be encrypted. The privileged operator, running unencrypted with the standard arithmetic, can see and try their luck at modifying encrypted data, but has no special access to the information in it, as proven here. We test the issues, reporting performance in particular for 64-bit Rijndael and 72-bit Paillier encryptions, the latter running keylessly.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Breuer P., Bowen J., Palomar E. and Liu Z. (2016). A Practical Encrypted Microprocessor . In Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications - Volume 4: SECRYPT, (ICETE 2016) ISBN 978-989-758-196-0, pages 239-250. DOI: 10.5220/0005955902390250

in Bibtex Style

@conference{secrypt16,
author={Peter T. Breuer and Jonathan P. Bowen and Esther Palomar and Zhiming Liu},
title={A Practical Encrypted Microprocessor},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications - Volume 4: SECRYPT, (ICETE 2016)},
year={2016},
pages={239-250},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005955902390250},
isbn={978-989-758-196-0},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications - Volume 4: SECRYPT, (ICETE 2016)
TI - A Practical Encrypted Microprocessor
SN - 978-989-758-196-0
AU - Breuer P.
AU - Bowen J.
AU - Palomar E.
AU - Liu Z.
PY - 2016
SP - 239
EP - 250
DO - 10.5220/0005955902390250