Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

International Initiatives

• F*: Microsoft Research (Cambdridge, Redmond), IMDEA (Madrid)

• TLS analysis: Microsoft Research (Cambridge), Mozilla, University of Rennes

• Web Security: Microsoft Research (Cambridge, Redmond), Imperial College (London), University of Stuttgart

• Micro-Policies: University of Pennsylvania, Portland State University

• Title: Advanced New Hardware Optimized for Policy Enforcement, A New HOPE

• Program: DARPA SSITH

• Duration: January 2016 - December 2018

• Coordinator: Charles Stark, Draper Laboratory

• Participants: Catalin Hritcu

• Abstract: A New HOPE builds on results from the Inherently Secure Processor (ISP) project that has been internally funded at Draper. Recent architectural improvements decouple the tagged architecture from the processor pipeline to improve performance and flexibility for new processors. HOPE securely maintains metadata for each word in application memory and checks every instruction against a set of installed security policies. The HOPE security architecture exposes tunable parameters that support Performance, Power, Area, Software compatibility and Security (PPASS) search space exploration. Flexible software-defined security policies cover all 7 SSITH CWE vulnerability classes, and policies can be tuned to meet PPASS requirements; for example, one can trade granularity of security checks against performance using different policy configurations. HOPE will design and formalize a new high-level domain-specific language (DSL) for defining security policies, based on previous research and on extensive experience with previous policy languages. HOPE will formally verify that installed security policies satisfy system-wide security requirements. A secure boot process enables policies to be securely updated on deployed HOPE systems. Security policies can adapt based on previously detected attacks. Over the multi-year, multi-million dollar Draper ISP project, the tagged security architecture approach has evolved from early prototypes based on results from the DARPA CRASH program towards easier integration with external designs, and is better able to scale from micro to server class implementations. A New HOPE team is led by Draper and includes faculty from University of Pennsylvania (Penn), Portland State University (PSU), Inria, and MIT, as well as industry collaborators from DornerWorks and Dover Microsystems. In addition to Draper's in-house expertise in hardware design, cyber-security (defensive and offensive, hardware and software) and formal methods, the HOPE team includes experts from all domains relevant to SSITH, including (a) computer architecture: DeHon (Penn), Shrobe (MIT); (b) formal methods including programming languages and security: Pierce (Penn), Tolmach (PSU), Hritcu (Inria); and (c) operating system integration (DornerWorks). Dover Microsystems is a spin-out from Draper that will commercialize concepts from the Draper ISP project.